SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

A NEW INTERPRETATION OF 
RACE-TRADITIONS 



BY 



ADOLPH ROEDER 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
MCMIII 



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Copyright, 1903, by Harper & Brothers. 

AU rights reserved. 

Published November, 1903. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP • PAGE 

Foreword iii 

I. Introductory i 

II. The Twin Brother Story 16 

III. The Man-Animal Story 44 

IV. The Life-Token 84 

V. Journeys and Wanderings 112 

VI. The Captive Maiden 128 

VII. Gods, Heroes, Dwarfs, and Giants . 143 

VIII. The Architecture of Souls .... 182 

IX. Conclusion 202 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/symbolpsychologyOOroer 



FOREWORD 

THERE is but little to say in placing this 
book before its readers. The author has 
started from the premises that there is an 
infinite God, who can by infinite means re- 
veal Himself to His children, and that He 
has done so; that we are all His children, 
and that we have always been; that Greek 
and Roman, Jew and Gentile, are His chil- 
dren, and that He tells unto them all the 
wonderful story of the birth and growth of 
their souls, and to each child in his own 
sweet mother-tongue, and by symbols in- 
telligible to him and conveying to him, either 
consciously or subconsciously, the same man- 
ner of instruction. 



FOREWORD 

A few of the symbols known to the race 
have been gathered together here, and an 
effort has been made to show their intrinsic 
coherence — with what success the reader 
will judge. And if the author has failed to 
impress upon the reader the value of this 
symbol or of that, it will be a source of re- 
gret to him for his lack of ability to express 
what was in his mind; but if he has failed 
to impress upon the mind of his reader the 
fundamental thought of the unity of the race 
and of the Fatherhood of God, then will he 
have failed in the actual purpose of the 
book — failed in showing that God talks to 
all His children and tells them all the same 
sweet story of His fatherhood to them, and 
of their childhood to Him — unto each as 
he can comprehend, and unto each in the 
tender accents of his own native mother- 
tongue. 

May the little book be a help to those who 
vi 



FOREWORD 

are studying the Works and the Word of 
God, and may the Wonder Book indeed be 
a "Lamp unto their feet and a Light unto 
their path.'' 

Adolph Roeder. 

Orange, N. J., 

In the summer, 1903. 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 



INTRODUCTORY 

AT the outset, the question arises: "What 
jl\ is Symbol -Psychology?" In the first 
place, we are aware that every force in Nature 
leaves behind it certain traces of its work. 
The forces which have helped in the forma- 
tion of the earth's surface — wind, water, heat, 
light, gravitation, the vegetative and the 
animal forces — have written the story of the 
world's creation in legible lines all over the 
face and substance of the globe. Line upon 
line, precept upon precept, the attentive 
student is learning to read more and more 
of the history of the life of the globe from 
the traces which the forces of life have 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

written into rock and tree, into sea-shore and 
crag, into bone and muscle, into hair and 
skin. Each line, each cluster of lichen, each 
group of hairs, each dent in tooth or bone, 
symbolizes a physical process. It tells the 
story of physical forces at work upon physical 
structures, and the progress made and the 
design involved. 

In the same way, in the world of mental 
things, a series of forces has been at work, 
and has left distinct traces of itself. The 
forces of the mental world are not yet as 
familiar as those of its physical counterpart ; 
they are more obscure, more occult, more 
intimately related to and interwoven with 
man's own mentality, and they therefore 
escape his notice, growing elusive from sheer 
familiarity. Yet there are direct lines of 
force growing as legitimately from a dual 
centre, as all known physical forces grow 
from their dual centre — heat and light. Radi- 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

ating out from volition and intellection, or 
from the potentialities called Will and Un- 
derstanding (whether posited in the sense 
of Schopenhauer and Spencer or of Berkeley 
and Swedenborg), are distinct sets of forces 
called reason, imagination, habit, language, 
custom, tradition, art, science, logic. They 
are as distinct and legitimate a series as are 
magnetism, electricity, gravitation, etc., their 
physical confreres and shadows, and as sub- 
ject to law. 

In whatever sense mental and physical 
forces are granted, the facts required for our 
present purpose remain the same — namely, 
that mental forces leave traces of their work 
behind, which traces resemble and correspond 
to traces left on physical structures by phys- 
ical forces. 

Every student of language knows that he 
is investigating certain definite forces and 
their habits as soon as he scrutinizes at all 
3 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

closely the habits of words and of letters. 
For instance, let us assume that a stu- 
dent is comparing two languages, say Ger- 
man and English. He has found out the 
fact that the two languages are closely 
related, and has devised a theory to cover 
that relationship to his satisfaction. In his 
further investigation he encounters a law 
familiar to him from previous study of other 
languages — namely, the law of persistence. 
He finds that the forces active in creating 
the thing called language show undeniable 
tokens of persistence in somewhat the same 
way as matter in general shows tokens of a 
common factor called resistance. That is to 
say, he has noted that the root-form selected 
by the race-mind for certain elementary 
words does not alter. That the Shemite, for 
instance, establishes the letter B or P as the 
basis of the word Father, and the letter M 
as the basic element of the word Mother, 
4 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

and that upon this radical there has gradu- 
ally been built a persistent word which 
shows in Greek as Pater, in Latin as Pater, 
in German as Vater, and in English as 
Father, while the other shows in Greek as 
Meter, in Latin as Mater, in German as 
Mutter, and in English as Mother. Putting 
this side by side with about twenty-five or 
thirty such persistent roots, the student has 
reason to think that the forces active in the 
creation of the thing called language have cer- 
tain elements of persistence about them. He 
now proceeds to note in what way the force 
called persistence becomes subject to modi- 
fication, and he proposes to trace this in a 
comparison of the two languages, German 
and English. He notes, first, that certain 
words are exactly alike: 

Hand hand 

Land land 

Band band, etc. ; 

5 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 
that in certain others there are slight changes, 

Hut hat 

Hund hound 

that is, vowel changes, and he delights in 
noting that his irregular English nouns, such 
as mice, oxen, feet, geese, etc., were "Made 
in Germany." But this, although sufficient 
to prove the element of persistence, is not 
sufficient to show a law of modification. He 
now takes up such words as these: 

Tisch dish 

Fabrik fabric 

They are evidently the same word, but when 
the German says Tisch, he means the table, 
and when the Englishman says dish, he 
means the thing on the table; when the 
German says Fabrik, he means the factory; 
when the Anglo-Saxon says fabric, he means 
the thing that comes from the factory. This 
6 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

discovery, fortified by a dozen or more sim- 
ilar ones, confirms the student in the state- 
ment that "Where the German leaves off, 
the Anglo-Saxon begins " ; and he has found, 
actually stumbled upon, a law in language, 
the exact counterpart of a psychological law 
of ethnology, for the German does carry a 
thing theoretically up to a certain point, 
and there he drops it, and right at this point 
the Anglo-Saxon gathers it up and starts in 
with it. Witness the whole history of Phi- 
losophy, of Religion, of Literature, and it will 
bear out this point and establish the law of 
persistence of mental forces and the manner 
in which ethnic cells — for each nation is but 
a set of cells in the giant unit called Race — 
will receive and transmit a thought-impulse 
and leave permanent traces of this fact in 
the structure of language as permanent as 
are traces of fire in lava and of erosion in a 
deserted river-bed. 

7 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

Again, the student becomes interested in 
the general law of inversion. He has traced 
that law through a number of instances, 
some of them merely pleasant pastime, such 
as these: 

Live Evil 

Nebel Leben 

and therefore easily and properly set aside. 
But he has reached others, made of sterner 
and more real word fabric. Thus he has 
noted that the Shemitic and Sanscrit root 
T B, which means ''good," is inverted in 
several language-families into B T or b- 
d- (as in bad, bose, etc.), and means the 
opposite of good; that the Aryan root K- 
B-R, which refers to cover, or to raise a 
mound, when inverted to K-R-B- refers to 
uncovering, or to depressing, or digging a 
grave (grab, grave, grube, Cerberus, grapho, 
and a multitude of other words growing 
8 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

from this root), and that another inversion 
of the root, B-R-K-, refers to the fact that 
a thing, once covered, may break forth (or 
uncover itself) ; and in noting this and sim- 
ilar series, the student has been mentally 
prepared to see that, there is a law of in- 
version, and that if he chooses to follow 
that law along, he will find it to be as true 
(and true for the same reasons) as is the law 
in Mathematics that a quantity changes its 
sign in crossing the equator; thus, 4 + 6 = 10 
is the same as 4=10 — 6. He may discover 
a natural factor through which this law 
manifests itself. He may, on due investi- 
gation, ascertain this series of facts: the 
word folio (leaf) or the root F-L in Latin, 
turns about to L-F (or leaf) in English. 
In doing so, it passes through a process com- 
mon among the uncultured classes — that is 
to say, a certain stratum of human society 
turns words about. Thus, in the South the 
9 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

word "ask" is frequently turned to "aks" 
on the lips of the unlettered, and the word 
"thief" is with equal frequency pronounced 
"fieth" (so "ossifer" for "officer," "ane- 
nome" for "anemone"). But the fact that 
the means whereby the turn is made are 
known does not explain its psychological 
origin. Why do the uneducated classes turn 
words around? Why not do some one of 
the many other things with them which are 
within the reach of possibility? The fact 
remains that, by this means or that, words 
turn around, just as the entire structure 
of language turned around at one period 
of the world's history, and there arose 
a great branch of the human family that 
wrote from left to right, whereas all writing 
up to that time had been from right to left. 
The fact that the world, at the period of 
time when this change took place, had sunk 
to the lowest dregs of vulgarity and degra- 
10 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

dation simply confirms the law that when 
people are uncultured they say things back- 
ward. The point to be established is that 
there is a law of inversion in language, as 
there is in Mathematics, in Light (the eye 
inverts the image), in Music, and in every 
department of human activity, mental and 
volitional, and this law is here simply intro- 
duced to serve as a specimen of a series of 
laws in every way coinciding with and corre- 
sponding to specific series of laws as dis- 
coverable in and applicable to physical sub- 
stances, forces, and phenomena. 

There is evidently a law of persistence, of 
transmission, of inversion, etc., in language, 
as evidently as there is a law of gravitation, 
of capillarity, of cohesion, etc., in physical 
substances. 

Having established this point, the student 
is prepared to realize that there are laws 
and that he can trace these laws in the mak- 
ii 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

ings and markings of words, as he can trace 
the laws governing matter in the makings 
and markings of rocks. 

It is but natural that the student should 
pass from the consideration of single words 
and letters to the construction of stories 
and tales from these letters and words, just 
as he would pass from the consideration of 
single rocks to the study of stratification 
and from the consideration of a single tree 
to the study of the botanical and geographical 
distribution of that type of tree. 

He is urged to this particular view of the 
case by various incidents, the most prominent 
of which is the recurrence of certain typical 
stories in all countries and among all nations. 
As a student of geology, finding cobbles at 
the foot of a mountain-range in North Amer- 
ica, and again in South America, and again 
in Switzerland, will naturally conclude that 
the mountain-range and the cobble - stone 

12 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

stand in some fixed relationship to each 
other, so the student who finds in a series of 
two hundred and fifty odd stories gathered 
from all countries a Twin Brother Idea, and 
a Captive Maiden Idea, and an Impostor 
Idea, and a Witch Idea, etc., all given in 
almost unchanging sequence, will come to 
the conclusion that there is some intrinsic 
nexus in the sequence, and that the mind 
of the Race has submissively recognized that 
nexus and tacitly admitted it. 

To the study of these common factors in 
the myths, sagas, legends, and folk-lore of the 
peoples does this work address itself. In doing 
so, the author has found the following common 
factors which enter into the construction of 
the traditions, and has divided them into 
three cycles, which may in general be called : 

I. The Creative Cycle. 
II. The Constructive Cycle. 
III. The Reconstructive Cycle. 

13 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

Under the heading of the first cycle there 
are to be grouped the following common 
factors : 

i. Creation Stories. 

2. Garden (Paradise, Hesperides) Stories. 

3. Flood Tales. 

4. Fratricide. 

5. The Building of a Tower or City. 

6. The Tale of Restoration. 

7. The Story of Captivity. 

The second cycle, called the Constructive, 
may be arranged under the following heads : 

1. The Twin Brother Story. 

2. The Man-Animal Story. 

3. The Life-Token. 

4. Journeyings and Combats. 

5. The Captive Maiden and the Sleeper Story. 

6. God, Heroes, Dwarfs, and Giants. 

7. The Architecture of Souls. 

The third, or Reconstructive Cycle, most 
naturally falls under these heads: 
14 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

i. The Hero or Savior. 

2. Miracles attending the Hero or Savior. 

3. Transfiguration. 

4. Sacrifice and Death. 

5. Resurrection and Ascension. 

6. Overthrow of the Enemy. 

7. The New Order of Things. 

Equal interest attaches to all three of 
these cycles, but the second is the one that 
has received least attention at the hands of 
writers hitherto. It is to this, therefore, 
that it is proposed to confine the present 
work. We, therefore, take up the second 
cycle in its order. 



II 

THE TWIN BROTHER STORY 

IN order that the method of interpretation, 
whereby this work will endeavor to solve 
a few of the problems presented by myths 
and symbols may come clearly before the 
reader, a word on the idea of Dualism is 
essential as preliminary to the introduction 
of the facts in hand. If we persist in the 
method of tracing Laws and Forces and Con- 
ditions pointed out in the first chapter, the 
student of things mental, who follows the 
general method of analogy or correspondence, 
will first investigate the Law of Duality as 
set forth and demonstrated in things physical. 
He opens his investigation at the foot of 
the ladder and calls to mind that at the bot- 
16 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

torn of things there is a primal duality — 
the duality of Substance and Force. What- 
ever theory or school of philosophy may be 
used in interpreting the origins, causes, and 
interrelations of these two entities, they two 
remain in the end as an ultimate analysis — 
there is a thing (or series of things) called 
force, and there is a thing (or series of things) 
called substance. Philosophically, we reduce 
this idea to the ultimate analysis of a thing 
acting or an agent, and a thing being acted 
upon or a recipient (reagent). In all cases, 
and under all known conditions, there is an 
agent and a reagent. The existence of this 
duality has begotten and warranted a second 
duality, since in considering these two things, 
Force and Substance, the thinker may reason 
on and emphasize the operation of Force 
upon substance or the reaction of substance 
against force. If he reasons predominantly 
in the one way, we call his reasoning and his 
17 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

method of procedure synthetic; if he pro- 
ceeds in the second way, we call it analytic. 
Stepping from this fundamental rung of the 
ladder to the next one, the student is im- 
mediately impressed with the fact that Force 
is dual in its presentation, in that it has a 
positive and a negative manifestation. So 
distinct is this duality that we readily rec- 
ognize it in attraction and repulsion, in con- 
densation and evaporation, in the peculiar 
duality of magnetism and electricity, which 
we have called positive and negative for want 
of a different (and possibly a better) term. 
And as he passes upward into the study of 
structure in substance, he has unfolded be- 
fore him a peculiarly striking manifestation 
of duality in sexuality; whether he looks 
upon it in its lowest form of cast and matrix, 
or in a higher form of pollen and pistil, or in 
the highest form of male and female, there 
is the definite idea of agent and reagent, of 
18 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

actor and recipient elaborated in kaleido- 
scopic multiplicity and in bewildering and 
fascinating detail. 

And passing from this second rung of the 
ladder, he ascends the third ; he passes from 
physical things to things metaphysical, from 
things material to things spiritual, from body 
to mind, and instantly mind presents the 
same phenomena which the body present- 
ed — he is faced by what the philosophers 
have been impelled to call the subjective 
and the objective, the ideal and the real, the 
interior and the exterior, the Atma and the 
Linga, or any other duality that may serve 
in the particular system of philosophy to 
which he has chosen to subscribe. There is a 
world within man and a world without ; there 
is a side to man that turns to the inner world, 
and there is a side that turns to the outer. 
And here is the elementary form of dualism 
from which we wish to set out. 
19 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

At an early day in the development of 
expression the Race- Brain (for the whole is 
equal to the sum of all its parts, and the 
Totality of a Race- Brain soon shapes and 
forms expressions for the aggregate thought- 
processes of individual brains) projected the 
concept of Dualism into its statements of 
mentality. Into its religious atmosphere it 
projected the Dualism ultimately set forth 
in the Christian mythology as God and the 
Devil, or in the Persian as Ormuzd (Ahura- 
mazda) and Ahriman, or in other my- 
thologies under other names. Into tradi- 
tional symbolism this thought was trans- 
mitted by the Twin Brother or the Two 
Brother Idea. In all lands and under all 
skies men tell the story of the Brothers, in 
most cases of the Twin Brothers. Into the 
Fairy Tale these brothers came usually with- 
out a name, simply as the Two Brothers — 
the Elder Brother and the Younger Brother, 
20 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

but in some cases they have names. A Ger- 
man Fairy Tale calls them Water-Peter and 
Water -Paul, and, again, John Waterspring 
and Caspar Waterspring. The Swedish folk- 
tale calls them Silverwhite and Littlewarder ; 
in East Gothland they appear as Lillekort 
and Lavring; in Lithuania as Strong-Hans 
and Strong-Peter; in a French tale, trans- 
mitted from an Italian source, they are called 
Carmelovo and Fonzo (probably Alphonso), 
and under a variety of other names in folk- 
tales, ranging from the extreme northern 
boundary of Russia to the southernmost 
boundaries of Abyssinia, and from the West- 
ern Pyrenees to the Cliff Dwellings of the 
Zuni Indians in Arizona. Roman mythology 
furnishes the twins Romulus and Remus; 
Greece, Castor and Pollux; the Anglo-Saxon 
stock supplies Hengist and Horsa ; the Navajo 
Indian submits the twins Hasjelti and Host- 
jogon; our own revelation gives us Cain and 

21 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

Abel, Jacob and Esau, Moses and Aharon, 
Peter and Andrew, Jacob (James) 1 and 
John. 2 

Remarkable as is the fact of this dual 

1 The name James in the New Testament (the brother 
of John, and also the other two men, so called), is 
given in the Greek as Jacob, and the writer sees no 
reason why a precedent established in 1611 should 
be adhered to in 1903, since King James, who reigned 
in 161 1, and whom the translators of the Present 
Authorized Version may have had reason to thus 
honor, has long since passed beyond the necessity of 
such honors. We, therefore, revert to the original 
form. In every case (in the New Testament), where 
James is spoken of, the Greek name is Jacob. 

2 The writer realizes that the insertion of this last 
list of names in the same catalogue with the Twin 
Brothers or the Two Brothers of Saga, or Maehrchen, 
or Folk-lore, militates strongly against the historic 
sense, and the reader may feel a sense of hesitation about 
Peter and Andrew, Jacob and Esau, Jacob and John, 
and Moses and Aharon, which he may not feel with 
Romulus and Remus, and but faintly with Hengist 
and Horsa. Yet it is well to remember that an epic 
like our Old and New Testament weaves so much 
legend and tradition about the actual historic figure, 
that that figure becomes less and less reliable. The 

22 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

representation itself, the fact that in the 
narratives involving the Two Brothers, or 
the Twin Brother idea, there appear again 
series of common factors is yet more re- 
central historic verity of Moses, and of the fact that 
he led a handful of Hebrew slaves out of Egypt, would 
better be gleamed from Herodotus or Josephus, and 
that thread held as a background for the story of the 
Exodus, against which the miracles and marvels, the 
Ark of the Covenant, the Holy of Holies, and the 
brother Aharon and other details, can be held as 
traditional symbolism, rather than an effort of a 
ruthless Deity to thrust incredible things upon His 
children as history. When the symbols are properly 
read, the Divinity of them and of Race-Intuition will 
become apparent, while if they be improperly read, 
they become incongruous. Read our modern Amer- 
ican historically fashioned records of Uncle Sam, John 
Bull, the Russian Bear, Tammany Tiger, and other 
types correctly, according to Race-Intuition, and you 
have instructive history; read them with too much 
literalness, and you have rather serious historic and 
ethnologic results. Limit the consideration to the 
particular case of Peter and Andrew, Jacob and John, 
a quartette of two dual types. Take them as legendary 
reiteration, and they become intelligible types in the 
drama of the Christ Life; but agonize over them as 

23 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

markable. If we examine the Twin Brother 
stories closely we will find in them a series 
of factors common to almost all of them, 
and singly absent from but few. Let me 
recall to the reader the familiar stories of 



historic figures, and your results will be simply chrono- 
logic nightmares. For the historian it suffices that 
the Saviour selected some plain, simple fishermen 
on the shores of Galilee, to help Him preach His Doc- 
trine, and the historian " submits as names these 
twelve," and then he may select twelve names from 
the conflicting lists. But the symbolist drops the 
historic thread and takes the two sets of brothers and 
classifies them with other sets created by the Race- 
Brain in its effort to solve the mystery of Dualism, 
and the Peter of whom he speaks can go to the sea 
and gather up a fish and take a bit of silver from its 
mouth and can perform other miracles, which the 
historic Peter may lay no claim to, and he can perform 
them with the same ease wherewith Wasserpeter and 
Wasserpaul perform them, as will be seen when we 
get to the stories proper. And the German Wasser- 
peter and Wasserpaul are not as far distant from 
the Peter and Paul of symbolic history as might 
be supposed, from historic association and historic 
appearances. 

24 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

Romulus and Remus, of Castor and Pollux, 
of Hodur and Baldur, of Cain and Abel, 
Jacob and Esau, of Fafner and Fasolt. 

Romulus and Remus are born of a Vestal 
Virgin, Rhea Sylvia. The God of War, Mars, 
is their father. They are exposed to die. 
A she-wolf mothers them and they grow up 
to be mighty warriors, the founders of Rome. 
When Rome is built and its wall finished, 
Remus criticises the height of the wall. He 
says it is not sufficiently high: " I can leap 
over it." 

"Do so," replies the angered Romulus. 
Remus does so. 

" Leap back," comes the voice of Romulus 
from behind the wall. Remus does so, and 
leaps upon his brother's sword. 

Now take the story of the Dioscuri, the 

twins, Castor and Pollux. They are born 

of the virgin Leda, to whom Jove has come 

in the form of a swan. Those who have 

25 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

followed the symbolism of antiquity have 
noted the frequent amours of Jove, and many 
of our modern writers have made unkind 
comment on them. But this comment is due 
to the fact that the investigator of to-day 
is inclined to take things literally in an 
anomalous way. It is quite common for the 
student to find a dissertation on the lack 
of conjugal fidelity on the part of Jove, as 
though the writer actually believed the 
various stories of Leda, Danae, Semele, and 
many others, for he treats them as though 
they were historic facts. But, surely, no 
modern writer would for a moment admit the 
fact that Jupiter loves Danae as a golden 
rain, Leda as a swan, etc. And if he does 
not admit the fact, why base a deduction of 
faithlessness on an unaccredited fact? If 
Perseus was not really born of Danae, the 
carefully guarded virgin by reason of a 
golden rain; if Castor and Pollux were not 
26 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

really born of Leda, why accuse Jove of 
infidelity and talk absurd vacillation about 
him? Why not understand these things as 
men like Socrates, or Plato, or Seneca un- 
derstand them? The Greeks and Romans, 
who devised and believed these stories, were 
the men who gave the world of to-day its 
geometry, its art, its music, its laws, and its 
roads. Will any one seriously maintain that 
these people of brilliant and keen intellect 
actually believed that Leda gave birth to 
twins, that the twins were born of eggs, that 
Jupiter was changed into a swan? Would 
not every intelligent Greek know that the 
root Kygnos (cygnus, Swan) is the same as 
the root gignomai and gignosko, and that 
it is a root involving intuitive knowledge in 
exactly the same way as the word Swan 
(Schwan) in German is an old root from 
Schwanen, to have premonitions, to know in- 
tuitively, and would not every intelligent 
27 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

Greek know that the Deity touches men's 
souls, the virgin soil of men's souls, in various 
ways ; that with some the Divine comes as a 
sense of stern and unflinching justice, that 
punishes, avenges, destroys, and that hence 
the virgin Vestal bears sons of Mars, the God 
of War ; and that with others God comes as 
an intuition, as an intuitive Something, and 
the story of Leda and the Swan is born ; and, 
again, with others, God comes by a " still, 
small voice," by a perception of what is true 
and beautiful, and that perception comes to 
the innermost and most deeply hidden re- 
cesses of the soul, and some one writes the 
story of Jove and Danae and the golden rain. 
If these stories be read from the view-point 
of the men who wrote them, the many re- 
lations of Jove to virgins will become symbols 
of the varying influx of the Divine Life into 
virgin human soul-soil, and they will cease 
to be exegeses of questionable morality, such 
28 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

as minds steeped in an atmosphere of in- 
different aesthetics have read into them. 

But to return. Leda gives birth to two 
eggs, and from these are born Castor and 
Pollux, also great warriors. They presently 
give battle to their enemies, and so attached 
are they to each other that the surviving 
twin grieves sorely over the death of. his 
brother, so sorely that the Gods in pity 
allow him to give his life for his brother, not 
always, but at intervals, so that Castor and 
Pollux live at alternate periods, in some of 
the stories, alternate days. 

Take Hodur and Baldur. They, too, are 
twins. They are the sons of Odin. Baldur 
is Baldur the Beautiful ; Hodur is Hodur the 
Blind. Far in the recesses of the Norse Race- 
consciousness the inevitable death of the one 
brother is known and felt. And the Scan- 
dinavian thus weaves the myth: 

"When it had been made known that 
29 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

nothing in the world would harm Baldur, 
it became a favorite pastime of the Gods at 
their meetings to get Baldur to stand up 
and serve them as a mark, some hurling darts 
at him, some stones, while others hewed at 
him with their swords and battle-axes; for, 
whatever they did, none of them could harm 
him, and this was regarded by all as a great 
honor shown to Baldur. But when Loke- 
Lanfeyarson beheld this scene, he was sorely 
vexed that Baldur was not hurt. Assuming 
the guise of a woman, he went to Fensal, the 
mansion of Frigg. That goddess, seeing the 
pretended woman, inquired of her whether 
she knew what the Gods were doing at their 
meetings. The woman, Loke, replied that 
they were throwing darts and stones at 
Baldur, without being able to hurt him. 

"Aye/ said Frigg, 'neither metal nor 
wood can hurt Baldur, for I have exacted 
an oath from all of them.' 
3° 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

" 'What!' exclaimed the woman, 'have all 
things sworn to spare Baldur?' 

"'All things,' replied Frigg, 'except one 
little shrub that grows on the eastern side of 
Valhal, and is called mistletoe, and which I 
thought too young and feeble to crave an 
oath from.' 

"As soon as Lcke heard this he went away, 
and, resuming his natural form, pulled up 
the mistletoe and repaired to the place where 
the Gods were assembled. There he found 
Hodur standing, far to one side, without 
engaging in the sport, on account of his 
blindness. Loke, going up to him, said: 

'"Why do not you also throw something 
at Baldur?' 

'"Because I am blind,' answered Hodur, 
'and cannot see where Baldur is. And, 
besides, I have nothing to throw.' 

" ' Come, then,' said Loke, ' do like the rest, 
and show honor to Baldur by throwing this 

31 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

twig at him, and I will direct your arm to 
the place where he stands.' 

" Hodur then took the mistletoe, and under 
the guidance of Loke darted it at Baldur, 
who, pierced through and through, fell down, 
lifeless. Surely, never was there witnessed, 
either among gods or men, a more atrocious 
deed than this" (Andersen, Norse Mythol- 
ogy, pp. 285, 286). 

The same element of struggle is evident 
in all the stories told of the Two Brothers, 
varied, of course, but always in evidence. It 
would carry us too far afield to endeavor to 
recapitulate them all — the story of Faf ner and 
Fasolt, of Alberich and Mime, and the rest. 
Suffice it to say that there are more than 
200 of these stories scattered abroad in the 
Race-Mind, and suffice it also to say that 
there are two closely related factors in every 
manifestation of force and substance, of life 
and volition, of insight and intellect, one of 
32 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

which prevails over the other. In other 
words, the Race-Mind has either consciously 
or subconsciously faced a general problem, 
and has concluded that in all conditions of 
life there are two contending factors, of 
which one prevails over the other in the final 
attainment of a design, the general outlines 
of which are usually stated in the story. 

Thus it is evident that the incident of Cain 
and Abel is inwoven in the minds of the tellers 
of the story with the struggle between agri- 
culture and grazing, while the struggle be- 
tween Jacob and Esau is typical of the 
struggle between the nomad and the agri- 
culturalist, in the later sense of the husband- 
man. But this physical or historic side of 
the story in no wise militates against the fact 
that the story is at the same time a general 
statement of psychologic values, for the ele- 
ment of preference or preponderance of one 
brother over the other is maintained in all 
* 33 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

the stories. If Moses and Aharon be com- 
pared, it will be found that Moses is the 
figure that preponderates; if any two such 
types be compared, it will be found that one 
has an advantage over the other. John must 
decrease in order that Jesus may increase; 
Mary has chosen the better part. Thus 
always, where the dual type is used. 

And as we note these facts, the conclusion 
seems almost irresistible that all nations, all 
tribes, and all peoples tell the same story, and 
the story is a record of the fact that men of 
all nations, of all tribes, of all peoples, have 
taken cognizance of the phenomenon that on 
all planes of human life there is a struggle 
between two factors, one of which pre- 
vails over the other. And the fact of this 
struggle, of the setting aside of one form of 
life for the sake of another, is in evidence on 
every hand when once attention is called 
to it. The destruction, for instance, of one 
34 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

form of life in the process of the construction 
of another form of life, is quite a familiar 
phenomenon. The egg is destroyed in order 
that the bird may be created and live. This 
occurs not because of any fault on the part 
of the egg, nor because of any superiority 
on the part of the bird, for an egg as an 
egg is just as difficult a problem to under- 
stand as is a bird as a bird. In one case we 
have a series of peculiarly homogeneous 
structures — a yolk, a layer of albumen, a thin 
skin, and a hard shell — each layer strikingly 
homogeneous, and yet, by the application of 
simple heat to the egg, there results a process 
of disintegration and a process of reconstruc- 
tion. Out of the four-ply mystery called an 
egg there is built another mystery, with a 
brain and a heart and lungs and senses and 
various organic structures, constituting a bird. 
How the thing is done we do not know. We 
have watched all the steps of the creative 
35 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

force as it moved along, and we have noted 
what it does first, and what it does next, and 
what it does last, but we have no idea how 
it all comes about, and how a simple force like 
heat, acting on the simple and apparently- 
homogeneous substances, the yolk and the 
albumen, produces all these wonderful or- 
ganic structures; we know only that the 
thing comes about, and when we come back 
to origins and sources we are in the position 
of the Greek who permits Castor and Pollux 
to live and to die alternately, because he 
prefers to leave such questions open and not 
settle them definitely, and say that Castor 
dies in order that Pollux may live, or that 
Pollux dies in order that Castor may live. 

What is true of the egg and the bird is 
true of other forms of life, organic and in- 
organic. Beginning at the bottom, let the 
student follow upward a general series of 
this idea. In general, and abstractly, every 

36 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

positive condition involves the setting aside 
of a negative condition. A certain degree 
of light means the destruction of an exactly 
equivalent degree of darkness, light and dark- 
ness being the twins in that case. This gen- 
eral statement applies to all cases, and the 
Twins are : 

Heat Cold 

Sound . Silence 

Motion Rest 

Light Darkness, etc. 

And among these twin conditions any con- 
structive process involves an equivalent de- 
structive process. The process of land-build- 
ing on the part of the ocean involves an 
equivalent amount of land destruction; a 
displacement of air involves an inrush of an 
equivalent amount of air; every action in- 
volves an exact equivalent of reaction. The 
angle of reflection is always equivalent to the 
angle of incidence; the seed dies that the 
37 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

plant may live; the worm dies that the 
butterfly may live; the blossom dies that 
the fruit may set; the body dies that the 
soul may be born. This list could be in- 
creased without end, and any number of 
series and sequences could be used to il- 
lustrate the general law stated by the Race- 
Mind in the stories of the Twin Brothers. 

Having noted the generality of the law, 
we may proceed to an application of the 
same. The Race-Mind establishes the point 
that the development of any one feature in- 
volves the disintegration or the overcoming 
of another. In the older methods of thought 
this idea of overcoming or struggle was usu- 
ally conceived as a matter of battle and 
conquest, and consequent victory ; applied to 
the field of mentality, ethics, moral and spir- 
itual life, the thought took the " conquest 
or battle" shape. It was thought that the 
attainment of spirituality involved the sacri- 

38 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

fice of the physical side of things; that 
the growth of spirituality was furthered and 
fostered by "mortification of the flesh," and 
quite elaborate systems of self-denial, self- 
abnegation, and self-sacrifice have been de- 
vised. True as this view may be in solitary 
instances, an exclusive maintenance of it 
loses sight entirely of a long line of practical 
results. 

It was a normal view to arise in mediaeval 
days, when man battled readily for all kinds 
of reasons, and when any kind of victory 
involved the injury and destruction of the 
other man, in a sense of physical annihilation. 
But these later days have made it possible 
to emphasize a victory, which means the 
subduing of one plane and the ascendency 
of the other, without the actual involve- 
ment of physical destruction. 

Take the growth of mentality, so far as 
certain features of life are concerned; for 
39 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

instance, the effort of the mind in reference 
to literature. There is a struggle to learn 
to read. The desire for knowledge, on the 
part of the mind, is struggling with the ele- 
ment of ignorance, its twin brother. In do- 
ing this there may be involved a certain 
amount of self-denial or sacrifice; it may 
require time, patience, and energy, but these 
are incidentals. They are not the primary 
factor. The primary factor is the training 
of the eye to recognize, and of the memory 
to retain, the letters, and sequences of letters, 
called words, and presently to make the eye 
travel without effort and automatically, and 
to make the memory record and combine 
words and sentences. This is the ultimate 
victory — to overcome the inability of eye 
and memory and make them both pliant 
and alert servants of the mind, who dis- 
appear because they no longer resist. 

And this victory does not involve the de- 
40 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

struction of books or papers, or eye or mem- 
ory. It involves the destruction and death 
of ignorance. So the development of spir- 
ituality does not involve the destruction of 
the natural; it involves the setting aside 
of un-spiritual conditions on all planes of 
life. 

Thus, again, take the training of the hand 
for any musical instrument — say the piano. 
When the mind first begins work on the 
hand, that hand is a helpless, inalert, heavy 
tool. The struggle of activity against in- 
ertia begins. The twin brothers join battle, 
and activity presently overcomes inertia, not 
by mortification of the flesh, with the idea 
of cutting off the hand or sacrificing it, or 
whipping it, but by the patient develop- 
ment of each muscle along its own line of 
tension and relaxation. There will be time, 
patience, application and perseverance re- 
quired, but these are incidentals ; the primary 
4i 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

factor is the skill obtained and the disap- 
pearance of the hand as a resisting medium. 

Hence, the attainment of any higher form 
of life involves the disintegration of a lower 
form of life, along physical lines, and along 
mental lines this element of disintegration 
does not mean destruction, but rather a 
rendering automatic of lower activities. 
Hence the attainment of a higher life in- 
volves not so much renunciation of the lower, 
but, rather, control of it. 

And this generic law it is that broods 
broadly in the Race- Brain in the dualism of 
the Twin Brother stories, and a clear con- 
ception of it renders intelligible not only the 
less perfect stories God told His younger 
and less mature children in myth and saga 
and legend, but also the more perfect story 
as told in the Wonder Book God wrote for 
His older or more mature children. The 
knowledge of this generic law will make in- 
42 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

telligible what the Race-Mind has to tell, 
when it evolves the story of Romulus and 
Remus, of Baldur and Hodur, of Fafner and 
Fasolt, and also of what the more interior 
or spiritual plane of the Race-Mind has to 
say, when it tells the story of Cain and Abel, 
of Jacob and Esau, of Moses and Aharon, of 
John and Jesus, of Mary and Martha, and 
of the story of the Prodigal Son, with its 
younger and its elder brother. 



Ill 

THE MAN-ANIMAL STORY 

BUT the race-man was not content with 
the general and broader recognition of 
the fact that man has two natures — an inner 
and an outer, a spiritual and a natural — a 
soul and a mind. It continued its research. 
When once it had drawn the broad distinc- 
tions between the inner and the outer, it 
next elaborated the idea that the inner nat- 
ure is human and that the outer is animal. 
Thus was the man-animal story born. The 
man-animal stories are quite familiar to 
every one ; every reader of legends and myths 
is familiar with the fact that there are com- 
binations of animals and of men of various 
kinds and in various orders. It is true of 
44 






SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

these forms, as it is of everything else, that 
there seems to be no connection between the 
different stories as they are told, but when 
they are more closely examined they yield 
certain quite definite results. The familiar 
idea of man setting forth upon his journey 
and associating with animals early in that 
journey, comes to the surface; that is to 
say, as we watch the hero of a fairy tale 
start out upon his pilgrimage he at first 
comes across certain animals, for whom he 
performs certain services. Usually the ani- 
mal is in some sort of difficulty, and the hero 
helps it out of its distress. As a reward for 
such service he is given by the animal a 
certain part of its own substance; usually 
the substance is a part of an antenna, a wing, 
a claw, a hair, a feather, according to the 
nature of the animal. The hero treasures 
these things which are given to him, and 
usually at the end of his journey the service 
45 



SYMBOL. PSYCHOLOGY 

is returned to him in kind. If he liberated 
some one at the beginning of the story, he is 
liberated at the end; if he simply assisted 
some one at the beginning of the story, he 
is assisted at the end. In a number of in- 
stances the animals remain with the hero 
and form a part of his company as he 
journeys, while again, in other instances, 
they leave him, and he travels on either 
alone or with a group of men, which 
group will be considered in a later chap- 
ter. 

This association with the animals may be 
called the distinctive association; it differs 
from other forms of association with which 
we will now become familiar. Of course, all 
these animals talk and have a consciousness 
and a life of their own. In this we have the 
first token of the fact that we are moving 
upon symbol ground, and not upon the 
ground of history. And this form of dis- 
46 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

tinctive association gives us the first group 
of the man-animal story. 

The second group differs from the first 
quite essentially. It is constituted of all 
stories in which a man is turned into an 
animal, or vice - versa. Quite frequently 
in these cases the man is converted into 
an animal in the early part of the story, 
but is restored to his true human shape 
and nature at the end of the narrative. 
This seems, in fact, to be the essential feat- 
ure of all such narratives, that the man or the 
woman should not remain an animal, into 
which they have been turned ; they shall pres- 
ently resume their true human form and their 
true human nature and function. This is quite 
evidently the trend of the stories, and evi- 
dently also the spirit which animates the 
men who devised the stories. That men are 
turned into animals is, of course, a very famil- 
iar fact, and that they are very intimately 
47 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

associated with animals is also a familiar 
fact in all stories, ranging from the very first 
beginnings of myth in the saga or in the 
legend, and ending with the realization of 
the most elaborate form of spiritual imagery 
in our own Old and New Testament; for 
the book of Daniel and the book of Revela- 
tion and the book of Ezekiel are filled to the 
full with the various combinations of man 
and animal forms, such as we know them. 
In some instances these associations with 
animals are crude in their nature, while in 
others they are most sensitively adjusted 
and exceedingly beautiful. 

The association of animals as given in 
the ordinary fairy tales, or as given in the 
myths or legends among the various nations 
of the earth, although essentially beautiful 
and poetic, yet the thoughts are so closely 
allied one to the other that the picture be- 
comes a trifle crude. Thus, for instance, the 
48 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

man goes out to fish, and the king of the fish 
rises to the surface of the water and talks 
to him ; the sailor finds himself faced by the 
mermaid; the traveller on the Rhine sees 
the Lorelei vision. But when we come to 
the more delicate touches they are not only 
poetic in their essential nature, but they are 
also beautiful and delicately adjusted ; thus, 
in the story of Siegfried, the introduction of 
the bird and the song of the bird, and the 
introduction of the fact that a touch of the 
blood of the dragon upon the tongue of 
Siegfried makes him understand the song of 
the bird, these are exceedingly poetic. In 
exactly the same way, when the story of the 
Saviour is told in the New Testament, it is 
so told as to associate him delicately and 
sweetly with certain animal forms; thus He 
was "laid in a manger," is worshipped by 
shepherds, and so various incidents are in- 
troduced which are exceedingly delicate, and 

49 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

which in themselves are beautiful besides 
being poetic, but the association is always 
there and always perceptible. This class of 
animal and human association constitutes the 
second group. 

When we take up the third group we find 
a something which in its nature is rather 
more startling. It is a concept of a com- 
bination of the man and the animal. In al- 
most all instances outside of Egypt the ani- 
mal form is the lower part of the man, while 
the human part is the upper section of the 
creature so formed. Thus we have in the 
sphynx the combination of the body of an 
animal and the head of a woman ; in the fish- 
god, Dagon, the body of a fish and the head 
of a man ; we have the human-headed bull ; 
we have the horse with a human head, and 
these same creatures are scattered through- 
out all mythology. 

In a general way the mythology of Egypt 

5o 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

differs from the mythology of other nations 
and other countries in this peculiarly dual- 
ized, human-animal form. The concept is 
so shaped in other countries as to emphasize 
the importance of the human by placing it 
at the upper end of the form, and to em- 
phasize the non - importance of the animal 
by placing it at the lower end of the struct- 
ure. But in Egypt this process is most gen- 
erally reversed. In almost all the Egyptian 
dualizations the animal head is attached to 
the human figure. The best method of un- 
derstanding this peculiar arrangement be- 
tween the human and the animal, as promi- 
nent in Egypt and as prominent elsewhere, 
is to contemplate a relationship now exist- 
ing between two nationalities as to philo- 
sophical concept. For, of course, it is ad- 
mitted in this consideration that every one 
of these mythological figures is in itself es- 
sentially a philosophical concept; it is the 
Si 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

concept of the relationship between what is 
human in man and what is animal in man. 
If now we take two nations which are thor- 
oughly well known to us, for instance, the 
German and the English, we will find that 
these two nations, in their philosophical con- 
templation of any one topic or subject, are 
exactly the reverse one of the other. As a 
general statement this may be considered 
true, that the Anglo-Saxon always begins 
at the bottom and builds upward — that is, he 
reasons almost entirely by analysis ; while the 
German begins at the top and works down- 
ward — that is, he reasons almost entirely 
by synthesis. It is for this reason that the 
German applies the epithet "naturalist" to 
the Englishman, while the Englishman is 
equally free with his opprobrium expressed 
in the epithet " empiricist," as applied to the 
German. That this is quite true receives 
some little confirmation by a comparison of 
52 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

the written alphabets of these two nations. 
If one will look at the English R and com- 
pare it with the German R, at the English 
W and compare it with the German W, at 
the English V and compare it with the 
German V, he will find that they are written 
one the opposite of the other. This, to- 
gether with a few other points, confirms the 
idea that the two nations are opposites in 
their philosophical concepts. In exactly the 
same way it may be safely said of the ancient 
Egyptian and of the Greek, for instance, 
that they were exactly opposite in their philo- 
sophical aspects of the relative life of man 
as to his human and as to his animal side. 
The Greek emphasizes the idea that the 
human side is prominent, while the Egyp- 
tian emphasizes the idea that the animal 
side is the prominent and determinate one. 
The countries as compared with each other 
also emphasize these various points. The 
53 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

Greek lives under an azure sky, and sur- 
rounded by all that nature in its prodi- 
gality can give him. The Egyptian lives 
in the arid plain of the Nile, and depends 
upon that wonderful river and its remark- 
able inundations for almost everything that 
comes to him. He is more closely tied 
to nature; he cannot get away from nature 
as readily as the Greek can, and the animal 
side of him is, naturally, more emphasized 
than it is with the Greek. So it comes about 
that these two nations, compared one with 
the other give this peculiarly remarkable re- 
sult: that the one emphasizes the animal 
side, the other the human; but, of course, 
both admit that these are closely and 
intimately associated, so closely that they 
can only be represented by one and the 
same figure. You cannot take man's hu- 
manity away from his animality, and 
you cannot take man's animality away 
54 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

from his humanity; any concept that sep- 
arates the two is not true so far as man 
during his life on earth is concerned. That 
is to say, the centaur and the sphinx, and 
other images of this kind, are representa- 
tions of the fact that man is of a dual nature, 
and that philosophers of all nations, and of 
all climes, and of all eras of history, have 
recognized that duality to the full, and have 
recognized, also, the intimate association 
between the sides of man's nature — the 
human side and the animal side. But on 
the animal side man has certain peculiar 
traits; he has, for instance, fidelity, which 
would be represented by the dog; he has 
persistence, which would be represented by 
the bull; he has a certain amount of moral 
nature and ethical culture, represented by 
the lion ; he has a certain intellectual nature, 
which is always represented by the horse. 
Consequently, various nations select various 
55 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

types, and one emphasizes the horse, another 
the bull, and a third a lion as being the pre- 
dominant animal trait with which true hu- 
manity can associate, and therefore which 
can enter into the construction of this pe- 
culiarly dual figure known as the centaur, 
the sphinx, etc. He who cares to make 
a comparison will find that the Old Testa- 
ment emphasizes that not one trait shall be 
prominent and all the others subservient, 
but that several traits really are parts of 
human nature. Therefore the prophet cre- 
ates a figure which is quite an elaborate, com- 
posite figure. This figure is called the cherub 
or cherubim. It is composed, according to 
the description given in the Prophet Ezekiel, 
of four parts. There are four heads: one a 
lion, one a bull, one a bear, and one a human, 
or, in some instances, an eagle. This is the 
composite, as given in our inspired record, 
which is, of course, the most perfect type of 
56 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

this peculiar relationship between what is 
human and what is animal in man. It seems 
from this consideration that philosophers of 
all kinds and of all races have recognized the 
fact that man is a duality, and have devised 
a particular type to cover that peculiarity of 
his nature. 

We have thus far considered three distinct 
groups of the association of animals and of 
men. The first group is that distinctive 
association in which there is simply a main- 
tenance of the two figures, separate and 
distinct one from the other. The second 
group is that in which the interplay of the 
two sets of faculties, the human faculties and 
the animal faculties, is most distinctly em- 
phasized, showing that in certain times and 
under certain conditions the animal holds 
entire sway and the human disappears en- 
tirely, while at other times the human can 
be restored and the animal can be made so 

57 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

utterly subject as to become entirely auto- 
matic or as to disappear. This is involved 
in all stories in which a man is turned into 
an animal or an animal turned into a 
man. A third group, or type, is that in 
which the duality of man and the intimate 
associations between his two natures, the 
conjunction between the two, the fact that 
they move side by side and do not disturb 
each other, is emphasized more particularly. 
Now we come to the fourth group, which 
brings out another and a more sublime idea. 
Of course, every philosopher has concerned 
himself more or less directly with the prob- 
lem of life, and as he faces this problem it 
appears to him in its essentially dual form: 
one is the life here on earth, and the other 
is the life which is to follow this. In some 
instances the idea of the life which is to fol- 
low is associated with the life before this, 
and this brings about certain reincarnation 

58 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

theories, and other thoughts familiar to us 
by a study of theosophy, but the philosopher 
mostly faces the question of life here and of 
life beyond. It is natural that he should 
represent the life here by a human figure 
and that he should associate that human 
figure very intimately with an animal form. 
It is also natural that he should associate 
the life hereafter with a similar human form 
as that used for the life on earth, but with 
such human form sublimated and made 
divine ; hence there is the creation of figures 
of deities, such deities as the philosophic 
aspect of each of the problems which his 
mind in considering and studying would 
naturally involve and evolve. He, there- 
fore, populates the world beyond with a 
great many images of deities of various kinds, 
and he co-ordinates them in such ways as 
to involve the idea that he realizes the dif- 
ferent stages of spiritual faculties and of 
59 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

mental traits. He realizes, for instance, that 
the trait of curiosity is not as important 
and not as valuable a one as the trait of 
maternal love; he realizes that the element 
of patriotism, expressed by brute force, is 
not as delightful and not as pure and true 
a humanity as that patriotism which rep- 
resents itself in municipal government, etc. 
He is, therefore, ready to create a series of 
deities, but while creating that series of 
deities he also realizes that it is essential that 
they should not be entirely dissociated from 
the fact that man is a creature of the earth. 
That fact then becomes represented by cer- 
tain animal figures and types. These animal 
figures and types are still associated with 
deities, and therefore we have in every in- 
stance a case of an animal sacred to its 
deity, and that animal distinctly described, 
although there is no record given to us as to 
why any particular animal should be sacred 
60 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

to any one particular deity. Every one rec- 
ognizes the fact that true mentality is in 
itself abstract, and depends not at all upon 
natural conditions and upon physical things ; 
and also the fact that true mentality can- 
not stand by itself, that it needs certain 
auxiliary implements, certain instrumentali- 
ties which will serve to express it. Thus, for 
instance, thought stands by itself, but it 
needs the spoken or the written word, which 
is produced by and through an animal 
organism, in order that it may become ap- 
preciated by those to whom it is addressed. 
The word, therefore, which is communicated 
to some one else must be communicated 
through the animal side of man's nature. 
Consequently all deities, although themselves 
abstract quantities of mentality, are as- 
sociated with animals in their description as 
given in the mythologies of the people. 
That various animals were sacred to various 
61 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

deities is a fact that need scarcely be dwelt 
upon. It may suffice to recall to the reader 
that, for instance, the eagle was sacred to 
Jupiter; the wolf, the cock, and the wood- 
pecker to Mars; the dove, the dolphin, the 
ram, the hare, the swan, and the tortoise to 
Venus ; the owl to Athene, and the dog to 
Hekate. 

Now that we have gone over the ground 
of these various groups in a general way, it 
may be well to look into the details of study 
which necessarily are involved in such a 
consideration as this. Taking it for granted 
that we have in these various stories a 
general consensus of all the philosophers of 
the world as to type and symbol, we are 
ready to see that there is a series of ideas 
present in the mind of every philosopher. 
The first is that the animal nature of man 
and the human nature of man are distinct 
one from the other. To those of us who are 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

interested in the problems of life, and who 
love to understand these things, and un- 
derstand them for the performance of a 
certain definite use, we have here a some- 
thing which is of the utmost value ; that is, 
we have a consensus of the Race -Man, so 
far as its philosophical aspect is concerned, 
to the question that the animal nature and 
the human nature of man are distinct. This 
question becomes of inordinate value when 
we conceive how the various elements of the 
animal nature are apparently involved in 
certain mental processes. There is no one 
who is not aware of the fact that the animal 
nature is thrust forward into the mental world 
at certain times and during certain con- 
ditions in such ways as might be described 
as, possibly, offensive, or even a stronger word 
than that — disastrous, say. In every case 
where the animal nature is thrust strongly 
forward, it is necessary for him who desires 

63 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

to understand the problems of life in their 
true aspect to understand and realize that 
the animal nature is different from the hu- 
man, and distinct from it, no matter how 
difficult that realization may be. 

Every one realizes that there are times 
when the physical organism is entirely out 
of order, and when, as in the throes of 
a violent disease, there are certain mental 
symptoms which appear. Thus, for in- 
stance, in typhoid fever, there are the low 
mutterings and the ravings of the patient. 
In other fevers there are various manifesta- 
tions which have a mental appearance, and 
it seems to us as though they were mental. 
It is to be noted, however, that the patient, 
when he fully recovers and comes back to 
his own real, vital, interior consciousness, 
loses all sight of the things which he has said 
or done during these times. This is true, 
also, of protracted spells of intoxication, 
64 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

when the mind is obscured and the animal 
faculties are strongly brought out. It is 
also true in cases of feeble-mindedness, of 
idiocy, and of insanity. In these latter cases 
we are beginning to incline towards the idea 
that the man himself, away inside of his 
mechanism, is perfectly sane and perfectly 
harmonious with all the laws of the universe, 
but that the physical structure of the mind, 
the brain, or some section of the brain, or 
some section of the nervous system, has 
been disturbed. I think that almost all 
modern authorities are beginning to con- 
template this idea very seriously, that it is 
not so much the man who is disturbed, as the 
physical instrument of manifestation which 
he carries about with him. There are two 
points which grow out of this consideration: 
one is a point of practical utility to all of 
those who are concerned with the education 
of man, for, in the first place, there are 

6 5 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

certain difficulties to be met with which 
are due only to the conditions of the physi- 
cal organism, and do not extend beyond it. 
Think of the help which this idea is to those 
who have the handling of feeble-minded 
children, or cases of arrested development, 
or who are concerned about the care of ma- 
niacs and the insane ; think of the assistance 
which grows out of this thought to them, 
knowing that it is only the physical organism 
which a man carries about with him which 
is disturbed, and not the man himself; that 
inside of the disturbed organism there dwells 
a real human being, just as real inside of the 
disturbed organism as he would be inside 
of a perfectly harmonious and well-regulated 
and well operating mechanism. Take, as an 
illustration, an injured hand. The fact that 
the hand is injured does not injure the mind ; 
it simply makes the mind unable to express 
itself through that hand. In exactly the 
66 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

same way, if the tongue were injured it does 
not injure the mind; it simply deprives the 
mind of the use of that tongue. In exactly 
the same way, when the brain is disturbed 
it deprives the mind of the brain. It is 
unwise to confuse the mind with the brain; 
it is unwise to turn the animal into a man, 
in other words. And this is the first point 
that grows out of the consideration of the 
subject in the light that the animal side of 
man and the human side of man are distinct 
and separate. The second point is also 
emphasized by these philosophers, who have 
written for us our fairy tales and our sagas 
and our legends and our myths. It is the 
point that what is done to the animal, pres- 
ently is returned to the man. It is well 
known that a man cannot deprive his physical 
organism of care and attention without lack- 
ing certain attention presently himself. A 
man who pays no attention to his brain will 
67 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

soon find his brain retaliating in kind. 
The man who takes good care of his eyes, 
the man who takes good care of his ears, of 
any one of the parts of the physical sides of 
his organism, sooner or later has the reward 
which belongs to them ; that is, whatever he 
does to the animal is returned to him in 
kind. 

Any one who reads the stories of the ani- 
mals and the service which the hero renders 
to them at the beginning of his journey, and 
the service that is returned to him at the end 
of the journey, will understand that this re- 
fers to the physical mechanism of man. And 
the man that takes care of his body will later 
find a body which will take care of him ; he 
will find a healthy, strong, and vigorous body, 
which will furnish him with a good brain, a 
good set of eyes, a good set of instruments 
whereby he can express his mental qualities. 
This is advice which is peculiarly applicable 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

to our day, and to the haste and strenuous- 
ness with which the American lives. If he 
were to go back to the old fairy tales and 
listen to what they have to say to him, and 
take care of the animal side as he sets out 
upon his pilgrimage, he would find the re- 
ward that comes to the hero at the end of 
the story, which is the same in his case as it 
was in the case of old. It will, of course, be 
remembered that in the fairy tale the animal 
is in want; that is, man has certain animal 
wants as he starts upon the pilgrimage of 
life. If these wants are properly supplied, 
the proper reward in the end will not fail. 
And this is what the fairy tale and the legend 
has to tell us and has to teach us in reference 
to the first group of things. 

We come now to the second group, which 
involves the turning of men into animals, and 
their final restoration to the human form 
and function. Whatever our particular sys- 

6 9 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

tern of philosophy may be, the fact is quite 
evident that man faces certain problems as 
he advances along the pathway of life. In 
the facing of these problems he can face 
them either from an attitude of spirituality 
or from an attitude of natural conditions. 
There are men who live what we call in 
the Church an entirely natural, or unregen- 
erated, life; that is, a life which concerns 
itself simply with the food he enjoys and 
with the house in which he lives and with 
the garment which he wears. He very sel- 
dom passes beyond his own physical wants. 
And many men, unfortunately, live just 
such lives as these. This, in a fairy tale, is 
called turning a man into an animal. It is 
not a pleasant way of saying it, but it is, 
nevertheless, quite true, for to be turned 
into an animal does not mean, necessarily, 
to be turned into a ferocious animal ; it 
means only to have the animal side so 
70 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

emphasized that the human side is lost 
sight of. 

In the uncomfortable, fierce theology of 
the Middle Ages we had rather unhappy- 
things to say of this mental position, of the 
condition in which man lost sight of his 
manhood and emphasized too strongly the 
animal side of his nature. And in the em- 
phasis that was placed in mediaeval theology 
upon this particular point, it grew so strong 
that the thought was that men were some- 
times so entirely lost and depraved that there 
was no salvation for them. But the story 
of the development of man, as told not only 
in the myths, but also in the sacred books 
of all the people, involves the idea usually 
of the return of man to his own con- 
sciousness. The preacher of the Middle 
Ages, indeed, emphasized the idea of the 
story, as told in our Wonder Book, that 
the Prodigal Son was utterly lost; that he 
7i 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

was lost and strayed away from his father; 
but the Word itself emphasizes the idea that 
the son returns. It does not leave him out 
in the far country with the swine ; it brings 
him back to his father's house. So the 
fairy tale, so the saga, so the legend; no 
matter what kind of an animal the man 
turns into, as his life progresses he is usually 
restored to his own self, to his own ego, to 
his own better consciousness, to that some- 
thing which was really his father's son, his 
father's child. So out of this group of animal 
and man stories there comes this wonderful 
thought, that the ultimate end of all creation 
is the survival of the fittest, not only in 
natural things, but also in spiritual things. 
As a general thing it is wise to think that 
God does the same in spiritual things that 
he does in natural things. And science has 
amply told us and assured us that nature 
tends towards the survival of the fittest ; that 
72 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

it removes that which is unfit, but that it turns 
every energy of its law and of its forces to 
the preservation of that which deserves pres- 
ervation. In exactly the same way it may 
be conceived that the design works along 
the lines of law in the production and care 
of spiritual and mental things; it is also in 
the continuous effort in spiritual things to 
maintain that which is perfect, and destroy 
or set aside that which is imperfect. At first 
the theologian is tempted to refer all that is 
imperfect to one human being, and all that 
is perfect to another human being, and thus 
to produce the distinct type on the one 
hand, which is called the devil, and on the 
other hand that distinct type which is called 
the angel. But there is a tendency in mod- 
ern days to understand that there is another 
possible way of co-ordinating things. We 
all know, of course, that in more ancient 
theologies the picture which is given in the 
73 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, of the 
separation of the sheep and the goats, and 
of the setting of the one on the right, and of 
the other on the left, has been interpreted as 
meaning that at a certain time all good 
people will be turned into heaven and all 
the evil ones into hell. But as we advance 
along lines of mental progress we become 
more and more convinced that there is a 
process going on in the human mind which 
is very aptly illustrated by just such a pict- 
ure as this; that is, you and I are con- 
stantly at work, laying aside certain qualities 
and separating the things which are desir- 
able from the things which are undesirable. 
What the grade and standard of the desirable 
or undesirable may be is a matter of investi- 
gation and of consideration. In this way, 
in growing from childhood into manhood, 
we lay aside a number of things which 
are quite orderly for childhood, but would 
74 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

hardly befit the dignity of manhood. We 
lay aside the tendency for certain games 
and the tendency for collecting certain ob- 
jects. As we pass through youth into riper 
and maturer manhood, we lay aside a certain 
number of things which were thought to be 
very essential, and which, doubtless, were 
very essential in their day. That is, we lay 
aside such things as the knowledge of Latin, 
and the knowledge of Greek, of algebra, of 
other college curricula, which at the time 
were quite useful, but which in the use 
which we are performing as adult beings in 
the world of business and in the world of 
social life and in the world of civic affairs 
have not the same import as they had 
in the days of the college. We turn them 
to one side and introduce in their place 
others which seem to us more valuable. 
We are, therefore, following out the pict- 
ure constantly, not only in passing from 

75 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

this life into the next, but, also, in pass- 
ing from any one stage in this life into 
the following stage; we lay aside one set of 
faculties as undesirable, and we adopt an- 
other set of faculties as more desirable. In 
other words, we turn aside to the one hand 
the things which we call goats, and to the 
other hand the things which we call sheep; 
we distinguish between that which we desire 
and that which we do not desire. It is, 
therefore, to be assumed that in that culmi- 
nating experience which men call death and 
the angel's resurrection, there will be a sim- 
ilar following out of exactly the same law; 
we will lay aside certain things which are 
no longer valuable to us, and we will have 
impressed upon our character those things 
which are valuable ; that is, the Divine will 
separate between the sheep and the goats in 
every man and in every woman that passes 
into Life Eternal. What, therefore, we have 
76 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

called in science the struggle for existence 
and the survival of the fittest, we call in 
theology the process of regeneration, and the 
element of vastation by means of which that 
which is undesirable in a character is de- 
stroyed, and that which is desirable in a 
character is preserved. In either instance 
we have the recognition of the same principle 
exactly which the makers of myths have seen 
— namely, the fact that man turns from an 
animal nature into a human nature, and that 
every law of matter and of mind assists him 
in that turning. Of course, as the nature of 
the mind changes, the nature of the faculties 
also changes, and therefore there are stories 
of all kinds of changes told in myths and 
in legends and in sacred books of all the 
peoples. Throughout the fairy tales, milk 
turned into blood, fish into birds, words into 
pearls and toads, etc., almost without end; 
and even into our sacred records the ele- 

77 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

ment of change is continued, for rods turn 
into serpents, water into wine, and so on, in 
many instances. But these are matters of 
detail. In the general and broad outlines, 
the fact remains that the ancient philosopher 
realized, as does the modern philosopher, 
that humanity and the animal nature of man 
are associated in this peculiar way: that 
from his animal nature he can work his way 
back to his true humanity. 

Let us now take more in detail the third 
group of figures. And let me say to the 
reader right here that I am elaborating 
general principles in this chapter, so that this 
elaboration need not occur in future chapters. 
In future chapters the reader is expected to 
continue this method of elaboration and to 
work out such details from what is given as 
he may find necessary or desirable. The 
best way to understand the philosophy of 
the race in connection with the peculiar 
78 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

composite figure, is to trace this fact. It 
matters not what system of interpretation 
we may be following out; it is evident that 
animals have always been used to represent 
certain human traits. It is a familiar saying 
that the dog represents fidelity, that the 
bear represents literalness, that the horse 
represents intelligence, that the horse is 
associated in certain ways with poetry by 
becoming a winged horse, that it is asso- 
ciated with understanding of various kinds; 
hence its introduction into the chariot of 
Phcebos Apollo, into the chariot of Nep- 
tune, into the City of Troy, when it is to be 
destroyed, etc. But nations have always 
differed in their concept of what it is that 
serves as a basis for true humanity; some 
have thought it was the element of fidelity 
or loyalty, hence the dog-headed humanity 
of the Egyptian records ; some have con- 
ceived of the idea that human nature is based 
79 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

upon the element of intelligence, and they 
combine the human being with the horse; 
some have thought that human character 
depended upon a certain kind of morality, 
and they have combined the human figure 
with the lion; some have thought that true 
character is a matter of slow and persistent 
toil. Toil is represented by the bull, and 
therefore they connected the human being 
with the bull; others, again, have em- 
phasized the idea that man is what he is by 
nature of his inheritance and of his en- 
vironment, by the very fact of being, and 
consequently they united the human figure 
with that which stands for the fact of being ; 
that is, with fish, and hence is born the fish- 
god Dagon. The best way of interpreting 
one of these symbols, therefore, is to find 
the meaning which is applied to the animal 
figure that is used and think of it as a basis 
for human character. As we all know, some 
80 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

characters are based upon the element of 
loyalty, some are based upon the element 
of truth, some are based upon the idea of 
simplicity, some are based upon the idea 
of innocence, and in every case the animal 
representing that trait would be used as the 
basis for the human figure, and thus would 
the compound be formed. But we realize 
that the philosopher would be presently faced 
with what goes into the Eternal Life. Thus 
the question would arise within him: What 
is there about the human character that 
is permanent? He realizes that language 
would not be permanent, since language 
is not an essential of thought — thought 
is independent of language; that memory 
is not an eternal factor, since memory dies 
with old age; that the habits of the body 
are not eternal, since they die with the body. 
He must, therefore, of necessity, recognize the 
fact that there are certain traits prominent 
6 81 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

upon earth which persist into the Eternal 
Life, and that if the human figure as a figure 
walking about the earth represents man's 
earth life, then a divine figure must represent 
his mental, or spiritual, life; and since that 
spiritual life does depend, to some extent, 
upon the things which are done on this 
earth and upon the habits which are acquired 
as to thought, as to affection, as to sym- 
pathies, as to love, therefore the animal must 
be a persistent factor and must continue 
as associated with deity after the concept 
of deity has been fully formed. Conse- 
quently, we have found in these four groups 
the following facts: 

First, that the philosophers of all ages have 
realized that in man there are two natures 
associated — a human nature and an animal 
nature. 

Second, that the association of these 
two is of a peculiar nature; that is, that 
82 



SYMBOL- PSYCHO LOGY 

it can be changed, the one into the 
other. 

Third, that the association of these two 
is of a distinctive nature; that there are 
certain traits pertaining to man as a man; 
that there are certain traits pertaining to 
man as an animal. 

Fourth, that into the future life some of 
these animal traits are continued; that is, 
that, to some extent, the real mental and 
abstract spiritual life of man depends upon 
the character which he has formed upon 
earth, which character is usually symbolized 
by an animal. Consequently deity has cer- 
tain animals sacred to it in its various forms, 
and we find this animal or that animal, this 
bird or that bird, this fish or that fish, sacred 
to such and such a deity or to such and such 
a god or a goddess. And this is what the 
race-mind tells us in this wonderful man- 
animal story. 

83 



IV 

THE LIFE-TOKEN 

PROMINENT as are the factors mention- 
ed in previous chapters, the life-token 
which we will consider in this is equally or 
even more so. The life-token is a familiar 
story in all of the ages of the world, and one 
which we see and find in all of the various 
fairy tales, the sagas, and the sacred books 
of the nations. In its crude form the story 
of the life-token is, in general, represented as 
follows: It is a something which is left be- 
hind when the hero sets forth upon his 
journeyings. This is a typical story: Two 
children are born, quite frequently in mar- 
vellous ways, and, also, quite frequently, by 
virgin conception. A fish plays a more or 
84 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

less prominent part in the story usually. His 
scales or his fins or his eyes are instrumental 
in bringing about the birth of these children 
and also the creation of the life-token. After 
the birth has taken place, the scales or fins 
or eyes or tail of the fish are planted, and 
they grow up into two trees. These trees 
indicate what is happening to the boys (or 
boy) as they (or he) go forth upon the journey. 
If they flourish and are fruitful, then all is 
well with the wanderer or wanderers ; if they 
wither, he is sick or they are sick ; if they die, 
it is a sign that the hero or heroes are dead. 

From this general or crude type of the 
life-token story a large list of such stories 
arises, some of them obscure, some clear, 
some consistent, some not so, some logical 
and full of sequence, others without logic or 
sequence. 

In the first stories, that is, in the earliest 
stories which can be found, the token left 

85 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

behind is usually a tree ; but in other stories 
the hero leaves behind him also other objects, 
for instance a dagger, a knife, a sword, 
usually driven into a tree, or he leaves a 
vessel of milk or of wine or of water, or he 
leaves a lance, a mirror, a shield, or a casket 
or a flute, or something which belongs to 
the hero or which is connected intimately 
with his remarkable or with his miraculous 
birth is left behind when he sets forth; and 
whatever happens to him, that something 
indicates it and gives warning that he needs 
help, and in most instances proves instru- 
mental in having that help brought to him. 
As the world grows older, and the stories 
grow more and more connected, this some- 
thing which is left at the centre of things 
when the hero and his companions set forth 
upon their quest becomes more of a typical 
centre, or, perhaps, it can be better named 
a centralized type; it grows more distinct 
86 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

as the story develops and more details are 
added to its description. With this added 
detail also comes the idea of the central 
figure being guarded or protected in a variety 
of ways. This element of protection is quite 
as pronounced as is the element of the life- 
token, and it is necessary for the reader to 
keep this in mind; as in the story of the 
Holy Grail not only is the precious goblet 
of the Grail itself pictured forth with con- 
siderable detail, not only are we told that it 
was wrought in one piece, of a huge precious 
stone, and that it was originally owned by 
Joseph of Arimathea, and that he caught 
in it three drops of blood from the side of 
the dying Saviour, but we are also instructed 
that it is guarded constantly by the Knights 
of the Round Table, who have taken vows 
of purity, and who are warned by the Grail, 
or the central life- token, of any calamity or 
danger that may affect the innocence and 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

purity of the outer circles of the land, so 
that they may hasten to the rescue. 

On another plane of folk-lore we have the 
same story in the narrative of the Niebe- 
lungen Ring. It will be remembered that 
this Niebelungen Ring is at the centre of 
destiny; it will also be remembered that it 
is left in charge of certain beings who are 
called the Rhine Daughters, whose duty it is 
to protect it. They fail in protecting it, 
and various complications ensue. It is 
known, from the Wagner Ring, what happen- 
ed to this wonderful life-token, for it is 
the life-token in a more polished form than 
the original form of the tree which we have 
seen in the earlier story. 

If we follow the long line of stories in which 
this life-token occupies the central spot, we 
will find grouped together a series of narratives 
in which an altar occupies that same central 
spot, and we will find that altar surrounded 
88 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

by a group of ministers or priests, or by a 
group of vestals, whose duty it is to maintain 
and sustain and cherish the offices of the 
altar. As we go on we find that the entire 
idea is gathered together presently into one 
most perfect form and type, which is the 
type with which we are familiar in our Old 
Testament as the type of the Ark of the 
Covenant. In order to understand this, it 
is best to separate the subject into its symbol- 
ic side and into its historic side. Let us so 
separate it for a moment. In the first place, 
then, the sacred record, as it is handed down 
to us, is symbolically the achievement of Deity 
of the highest type of symbol writing. I think 
this illustration is a fair one, namely, that 
a great artist, before he puts his final picture 
upon the canvas, will test the skill of brush 
or pen on some sections or parts of that 
canvas. Single figures will first be worked 
put — hands in certain positions, heads and 

89 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

faces turned in certain ways, a torso which 
bends hither or yon; studies of shadows, 
studies of outlines, studies of drapery. All 
of these are made by the artist before he 
gathers them all together into the per- 
fect picture. In this way we might think of 
the Great Artist of the Universe as drawing 
for His children the plan or outline of the 
work which He is doing, not only in the 
building of a physical world, but also in the 
building of a mental world; not only in the 
building of a single human body, but also in 
the building of a single human soul. In just 
that same way the Great Artist gathers vari- 
ous points together which at first He has in- 
grafted upon the brain-substance of the race 
at various times and at various epochs in his- 
tory. That is, the various stories which He 
has elaborated in this or in that part of the 
race-mind, He presently gathers together 
and weaves into one gigantic drama, which 
9Q 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

is the drama of the creation and sustentation 
and salvation of a human soul, as told under 
the type of the Sons of Israel. 

There is no doubt in my mind that the 
stories as told in the ancient days of Egypt, 
of Assyria, and of Babylon are essentially the 
same stories as are told to us, with only such 
slight variations as are required by the 
nationalities, by the elaboration and evolu- 
tion of the details. In other words, the 
stories, as given in our Bible, are evolu- 
tional types, as perfect evolutional types 
as are our bodies or our minds. We are 
slowly built by evolutional processes, and 
so was the Word of God slowly built. 
The cruder form of the story slowly gives 
way as the race-brain moulds itself to it, not 
as the hand of the Divine Artificer gathers 
skill, for that has always been and always is ; 
but as the race-brain becomes more plastic, 
more adaptable, the picture grows more and 
91 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

more clear, or, rather, it becomes less and 
less obscure, until at the last it stands 
forth in the most perfect outline. And the 
little story which began as a tree, which is 
left behind, or as the story of a ring which 
is protected by some one, or as the story 
of a sacred chest, slowly evolves, until it 
grows into the wonderful story as we have 
it in our Wonder Book; and as it grows it 
goes on and develops, and we trace it, step 
by step, in our Wonder Book, from one chap- 
ter to the other. And as about the altar are 
grouped the priests or the vestals, as about 
the Holy Grail are grouped the Round Table 
and its Knights, just so about the Ark of the 
Covenant are grouped the Levites ; and as we 
note this picture we see the wonderful story 
in its connection; the Holy Grail, the story 
of the Niebelungen Ring, the story of other 
life- tokens, is not so perfect and not so com- 
plete. In our story not a single detail is 
92 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

omitted. The element of order, of the desert, 
of the struggle and the journey, all the 
various details, the crossing of the river, 
the assumption of the Holy Land, all of 
these details are given in beautiful and clear 
outlines; there is not left a single vestige 
of doubt or uncertainty. The entire story 
is perfectly complete, perfectly compact. 

In placing the most prominent emphasis 
upon the symbolic side of a story of this 
kind, it sometimes seems as though the his- 
toric side of it were lost sight of entirely. 
But let us trace for a moment the historic 
side. Let us say that out of this cen- 
tral idea of a life-token there grows a 
certain idea with which we are all familiar 
in modern history. That is, at the centre of 
each nation there is a symbolic something, 
called a flag, about which that entire nation 
groups itself. We are aware of the fact that 
there is a history of the flag, but that history 
93 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

of the flag is a small and secondary detail 
in the elaboration of the flag as a symbol. 
The thing which it symbolizes is more im- 
portant than the history of the flag. We ad- 
mit, for instance, in the case of our own 
beautiful banner, of the flag which is at the 
centre of the American nation and about 
which all its destinies group themselves — just 
as about the Ark of the Covenant all the des- 
tiny of the Jew grouped itself — we admit that 
it has a historic value, that there is a history 
connected with it ; a certain some one at one 
time did construct this flag, and in the con- 
struction of that flag was guided by the wis- 
dom that came to the minds of the people 
about her and to her own mind in its natural 
sequence. She took certain strips of colored 
cloth, and she built them in certain ways and 
according to certain numbers — did so con- 
sciously, purposely, with perfect natural- 
ness ; and the historic side of the flag is of 
94 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

enormous interest and of some little value; 
but this is not the true value of the flag. 
The flag as a symbol is the thing which 
we are studying. We are, of course, inter- 
ested to some extent in the story of how the 
flag was made, and who made it, and where 
it was made, but we are not interested in the 
same way in that as we are in the flag as a 
symbol of our nation, as a means by which 
we are connected with other nations, as a 
protection to our citizens in foreign countries, 
and so on. Every American citizen has 
reason to be more interested in the flag as a 
symbol than in the original flag which Mrs. 
Ross sewed in Philadelphia. So, too, it is 
that we take an interest' in the small body 
of the Jewish people who at one time in the 
history of the race were in grievous captivity 
in a land called Egypt. There is no doubt 
that this small handful of men were taken 
out of that country by a leader of the re- 
95 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

bellion called Moses. There is no doubt that 
they experienced certain things, and that 
there is a historic value to be attached to 
these things ; but there is, again, no doubt 
that the more important side of their story 
is this: That the race-mind seized with 
avidity upon this wonderful story, upon 
which, as a thread of history, it could string 
its own life experiences, upon which it could 
hang its pictures of psychic experiences, 
its pictures of verities, until that little 
thread of historic Judaism, which weaves 
up from Egypt into Canaan, really became 
the marvellous story which it is. For the 
race-mind, guided by a divine instinct, or 
guided by divine inspiration, if you please, 
built up the stupendous book of human ex- 
periences, and used the Jewish experiences 
as a small thread upon which to string all 
these wonderful pearls. This is, in brief, the 
newer view of divine inspiration. It takes 

9 6 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

the idea of inspiration away from the pen or 
the hand of one man, but it places it into the 
infinite tenderness of God's care and gives 
Him infinite means of doing what we thought 
He could do only in one way. In other 
words, it is just as easy to think that the 
Almighty God can guide the entire spirit of 
the race as it is for us to think, as we did in 
olden days, that He could guide the spirit of 
one individual man and guide his tastes. But 
history and symbolism in no wise conflict; 
only let me emphasize the idea that the 
American flag is of interest to the American 
citizen as a symbol and not so much as a 
historic fact. 

If this particular method of reasoning be 
carried logically forward there will be no dif- 
ficulty in understanding that, although in 
this book symbolism is emphasized without 
reference to history, such emphasis does 
not destroy history; it simply gives prom- 
7 97 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

inence to another side, which otherwise is 
sometimes neglected. It need not be further 
emphasized, therefore, that all the stories of 
altars and vestals, and of central types and 
figures, are repetitions of this one typical life- 
token story. For an altar becomes a centre 
of worship ; it is in most cases placed at the 
very centre of the land. The welfare of the 
country roundabout depends upon the flame 
upon the altar being constantly guarded and 
protected, and this guardianship and pro- 
tection is placed in the hands of pure vir- 
gins, of pure men who are selected for that 
purpose, and who devote themselves to 
that work. As we note those stories we 
are struck with the idea that all have a vital 
centre, which becomes the means of salvation, 
which is guarded, and in the guarding of 
which the element of purity is an important 
factor. This should be borne in mind 
throughout the entire story. No theology 
98 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

or symbolism so thoroughly elaborates the 
picture of the central life-token as the He- 
brew Scriptures in telling the story of the 
Ark of the Covenant. There is a wealth of 
detail and a minuteness of description there 
to be found in no other place, and it is, there- 
fore, useful to turn our attention almost exclu- 
sively to this picture. It is a comparatively 
easy matter to trace the idea of the ark 
through all its various and devious wander- 
ings. In the first place, it comes before us as 
an ark in the shape of a huge ship afloat upon 
a gigantic body of water — the ark of Noah 
afloat upon the waters of the Flood. Into 
this ark are crowded various traits of human 
and animal life, some clean and some un- 
clean. Evidently this is a description of 
human character as it is launched forth 
upon the broad bosom of the sea of life, as 
yet crude and undeveloped, with many and 
various possibilities of good and evil. In 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

starting upon this assumption it will be 
noted that we take for granted what pre- 
vious students have discovered for us — that 
is, the difficulty of interpreting the story as 
to natural things. Book upon book has 
been written on this subject, and there is 
no need of dwelling further upon this par- 
ticular feature of the case. It is evident 
that we are not reading a story of natural 
things, or of a natural transaction, but we 
are reading a psychological concept of the 
launching forth of a human soul upon the 
sea of life, and we start with that assump- 
tion. When next the picture is introduced 
into the epic drama of the Bible narrative 
the ark has grown smaller, and now floats 
upon a smaller body of water. It is the 
little ark containing the babe Moses, the 
tiny, human epitome of the law. The char- 
acter represented by the ark has now be- 
come a more centralized, a more concentrated 
ioo 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

thing, with nothing of the animal about it, 
but with a strong sense of human identity, 
and it is launched forth, as the reader will 
remember, upon the river of Egypt. It is 
no longer floating upon the great sea, but 
upon a more determined and centralized 
part of the waters; after we have been told 
what happened to the babe, that it was 
found in the ark, then the ark passes from 
the water to the land. It is now called the 
Ark of the Covenant, and contains the crys- 
tallized form of the law, the tablets of stone, 
and around it as a centre is grouped all 
Israel, sheltered by its peculiar tabernacle, 
guarded by the Levites and the priests, who 
have taken vows of purity, as did the vestals 
about the altar, as did the Knights of the 
Round Table about the Holy Grail, with 
perpetual fire burning upon the altar and 
perpetual light in its candle-sticks of seven 
branches, and the perpetual presence of the 

IOI 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

Deity upon the Mercy Seat and between the 
cherubim. Everything depends upon that 
little shrine, the highest and most perfect 
type of the life-token known to symbolism. 
When the cloud upon the tabernacle moves, 
all Israel moves; when the cloud upon the 
tabernacle that is above the Ark of the 
Covenant stops, all Israel stops and goes 
into camp; and when the whole evolu- 
tional story of the life of the human 
soul has been told, and the Bible or the 
Divine psychology closes its narrative, we 
see the same Ark of the Covenant in the 
centre of things, in the world of spirit and 
of life. Note how a character slowly de- 
velops after it has been launched upon 
the sea of life; how it presently narrows 
down its pathway to the peculiar kind of 
vocation which it is going to select for 
itself — that is, how it begins to float upon 
a river; how it has certain ideals of hu- 
102 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

manity, which are the centre of all its 
entity; how these ideals are withdrawn 
deep into the soul and the stern realities of 
life are faced, and the babe Moses gives way 
to the tablets of the law, and how this 
wonderful something moves through all 
sorts of experiences on land and on water, 
on the emotional side of man's character 
and on its intellectual side, until man has 
passed through his wilderness experiences in 
this life, where there is so much temptation, 
so much trial, so much struggle, until all 
of the old character has been laid aside, 
until every one that is born in Egypt has 
died, until even our first concept of the law 
has died, before we reach that real promise 
of spirituality which God has made to us. 
If we study the progress of the Ark of 
the Covenant, we are noting and watching 
the progress of human character as the 
Divine Book tells it and gives us its story. 
103 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

The inner verities concealed within this beau- 
tiful symbolism will be given further in the 
chapter on "The Architecture of the Soul." 
It is not a difficult matter to determine what 
it is these tales of the life-token are designed 
to set before our eyes. Every one who has 
given any thought at all to the idea of cen- 
tralization realizes that throughout the 
world of matter and spirit there are certain 
centres of life from which originate all the 
action and upon which depend the welfare 
of the entire structure. Every solar system 
has a sun at its centre, which, by a series of 
laws, to which we have given the feeble 
names of centrifugal and centripetal forces, 
whirls certain globes or planets about it- 
self. Every one of these globes has, again, 
a centre towards which all things on its sur- 
face tend or fall. In the human body the 
digestive system has a vital centre, or life- 
token — the stomach; the circulatory sys- 
104 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

tern has a vital centre — the heart; the ner- 
vous system has a vital centre — the brain. 
As we study these and investigate them we 
find that they stand related to one another 
in a threefold order of importance or vitality 
or perfection of structure and function. An 
injury to the digestive system is not as 
serious a thing as an injury to the circula- 
tory system, and an injury to this is, again, 
not as serious a matter as would be an in- 
jury to the nervous system. Hence we find 
nature fortifying and protecting these life- 
centres or life- tokens in more or less elabo- 
rate and skilful ways. Thus she protects 
the life-centres of the digestive system, or 
stomach, by various layers of tissue, an 
omentum, a tightly drawn diaphragm, a 
series of floating ribs, and, in general, in an 
instinctive, inward sense, by arms and hands. 
But when it comes to the heart — the second 
vital centre — she uses for its protection a 
105 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

strongly built thorax of ribs, a pair of lungs, 
in the centre of which she hides the heart, 
together with several stout tissue structures, 
the pleura and the pericardium. At the 
same time she takes pains to introduce the 
element of purity, or virginity, in that she 
presses the lungs into service to purify the 
blood before the heart pumps it into the 
body and into all departments where it is 
needed. Now note the brain — the third 
vital centre — and see how carefully nature 
has placed it in a casket abode, cushioned 
the precious life-token on a layer of water 
within a threefold skin, with a peculiar 
arrangement of rectangulated branchings 
of the arteries, so that a throb of the 
heart may not reach the brain, and with 
every organism of the body active and 
eager to furnish the brain with its most 
precious substances and forces, and with 
every provision that the blood shall be the 
106 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

very purest, and that its virginity shall be 
assured before it is allowed to touch this 
life-token, or centre of all things. Now look 
at this picture : something happens to injure 
the body; an accident happens in the out- 
lying district — the hands, the feet, the arms, 
the limbs, the skin, the face. What takes 
place? Instantly the life-token, the brain, 
gives a warning cry, and blood and lymph 
and corpuscle rush to the rescue — the Knights 
of the Round Table sally forth to aid those 
in peril and in distress. Is it not a perfect 
picture? Hence it may be assumed with 
impunity that the story of the life - token 
sets forth the story of the protection of 
vital centres in all organisms. Thus far we 
have applied this general law to physical 
structures only; let us trace it into mental 
and metaphysical structures and forces. The 
mind has its vital centre in exactly the same 
way as the heart is a vital centre for the body, 
107 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

or the brain for the nervous system. The 
various traits, which I suppose are in their 
last analysis all one trait in various manifes- 
tations, which we have called affection, sym- 
pathy, tenderness, mercy, justice, and other 
names, are all channels that lead up to a 
common vital centre called love. Injure a 
man's memory, criticise his reasoning facul- 
ties, impugn his method of thought, and he 
will respond accordingly ; but touch his love, 
and you have struck a vital blow. We have 
seen that the Creator protects a vital, phys- 
ical structure more elaborately the more high- 
ly organized that structure is. It may, there- 
fore, again be safely assumed that the vital 
centres of manhood and of character are still 
more carefully shielded and guarded, and this 
leads us to the final conclusion, based upon 
the consideration of the typical symbol sto- 
ries of the life-token, namely, that, appear- 
ances to the contrary notwithstanding, the 
108 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

vital centres of manhood and character are 
protected in an infinite variety of ways ; that 
is, that the cherub guards the way to the 
tree of life to-day as he did in the days of 
old; that the outer man or the outer mind 
may suffer from a variety of disturbances — 
sorrow, sickness, poverty, insanity, idiocy, 
sin, vice, and crime ; the inner verity remains 
protected, and the real man within, so pre- 
vented from manifestations, is held secure 
and safe, awaiting the time of final libera- 
tion; for, although the ark disappears on 
earth, it reappears finally in heaven. By the 
law of the converse the next step naturally 
and logically follows, namely, that all the 
forces going outward from the vital centres 
are in constant endeavor to restore order and 
harmony in the outer districts, just as the 
forces of bodily life all tend towards the re- 
construction of disturbed physical func- 
tions ; this has also been recognized by men 
109 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

of science, in that they speak of the vis 
medic atrix natures. And as the forces of 
bodily life tend towards the reconstruction of 
disturbed physical functions, just so all the 
forces of mental life radiating out from the 
vital centres are in the constant effort to 
restore and reconstruct whatever mental dis- 
turbances may have been created. This is 
the lesson which the race-mind has written 
into the stories of the life-token. Nor is 
there any difficulty in understanding how 
the life-token is shaped and formed. If we 
take note of how it is done in the physical 
body, there will be no difficulty about under- 
standing how it is done in the mental plane 
of human life. The physical body con- 
structs its most perfect organs of the most 
perfect substances, subject to the most per- 
fect forces. It is a wonderful system of 
sublimating, of distilling, of refining, in such 
ways that the very best essence of blood and 
no 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

of lymph and of spirit ascend into the struct- 
ure called the brain, and there create the 
very highest and the very noblest type. 
There is no doubt in the mind of the writer 
that the same takes place on the mental side 
of the human mechanism, that God has ways 
and means of sublimating and of analyzing 
and of secreting the best and noblest thoughts 
and the highest and sweetest purposes, and 
that which is most true and most human in 
life, and of lifting it upward and upward into 
the highest regions of the mind, and build- 
ing there what Swedenborg calls the place 
of remains, or the inmost, upon which the 
life of man depends. The Ark of the Cove- 
nant, therefore, and all its sisters and 
brothers in the way of life-token stories, rep- 
resents what we call in the New Church theol- 
ogy the inmost of man or the groundwork 



JOURNEYS AND WANDERINGS 

AS was said in Chapter III, the Hero 
L sets forth upon his wanderings, and as 
he travels he passes through the associa- 
tion with animals to the association with 
men, and into that association there are 
introduced certain definite group ideas. 
No student of symbolism can fail to note 
the fact that with every heroic figure in- 
troduced into myth, saga, or tradition there 
goes an idea of wanderings. About the giant 
figures of the Christ, the Buddh, Ulysses, 
^neas, and all of them there is grouped a 
following of people — a moving mass, partly 
distinct, partly indistinct, yet very marked. 

112 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

At first all these stories look alike, but read 
a dozen or two or a hundred or two of them 
critically (the legendary lore of the world 
furnishes somewhat over five hundred stories 
of journeys and pilgrimages and wanderings 
of Heroes, of Gods, of Giants, Dwarfs, and 
ordinary mortals) and you will find that the 
wanderings separate readily and naturally 
into four periods, which I will call 

I. The Associate Animal Period. 
II. The Mass-Humanity Period. 

III. The Select-Humanity Period. 

IV. The Lone-Humanity Period. 

Let us look into these periods sepa- 
rately first as to the facts. Very nearly 
all stories begin along the familiar animal 
line given in Chapter III. For the sake 
of recalling their general shape in the 
cruder forms, let me quote an instance or 
two: 

* 113 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 
I. The Associate Animal Period 

" Once upon a time there was a wonderful 
musician, and as he walked through the wood 
one day he took the fiddle that hung at his 
back and fiddled, so that the wood re-echoed. 
Before long a wolf came out of the thicket, 
and . . ." 

" A long time ago there lived a King whose 
wisdom was noised abroad in all the land. 
Every day at dinner, when the table had 
been cleared, a trusty servant had to bring in 
another dish. . . . And when the King lifted 
the cover there lay a white snake, and ..." 

"There was once a fisherman, and ... at 
last down went his line to the bottom of 
the water, and when he drew it up he found a 
great flounder on the hook, and the flounder 
said, 'Fisherman, listen to me . . .'" 

And so the stories go on, hundreds of them. 
They begin with the association of the man 
114 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

and the animal before the wanderings and 
the adventures really begin. This is true in 
almost every fairy tale the Race-Mind has 
devised, but it is also true in all other de- 
partments of human literary effort, so far 
as myth, legend, and saga are concerned. 

If we go into Greek and Roman mythology, 
not only are the heroic figures of men as- 
sociated with animals, as Perseus with the 
horse Bellerophon, and Amphion and Orpheus 
and Arion with the lion, the doe, and the 
dolphin, but even the higher Gods, as was 
said, have associated with them certain 
animals that are said to be sacred to them; 
thus the eagle to Jove, the owl to Minerva, 
and so forth. The same is true in all mythol- 
ogy. Those of us who have followed Wagner's 
work will readily associate the Swan with 
Lohengrin, and will remember that Siegfried 
first appears on the stage with a bear, and 
that the battle of Siegmund with Hunding 
ii5 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

can best be understood if we remember that 
the Teuton root for Hunding means "dog" 
and the same for Welf (guelph) means "wolf." 
Those who are studying Anglo-Saxon tra- 
ditions will recall that the Teuton root 
for Hengist and Horsa indicates the fact 
that these two words are equivalent to the 
more modern English terms "stallion" and 
"mare." Those who are studying Hebrew 
mythology are reminded that in the phrase 
"Joshua, the son of Nun, and Caleb, the son 
of Jephunneh," the word "Nun" is the 
regular Hebrew term for "fish" and the 
word " Caleb " the same for " dog, " thus virt- 
ually making the term "Caleb" and "Hund- 
ing" equivalents when estimated according 
to their philologic values. If we go further 
back into Norse mythology we meet with the 
giant Ymir and the cow Audhumbla at the 
very outset of things. If we approach the 
horizon of modern things and modern na- 
116 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

tions we find "Uncle Sam" associated with 
the eagle, "John Bull" with the lion and 
the unicorn, Russia with the bear, China with 
the dragon, and so forth. If we go back to 
the scriptures of Christian and Jew, we find 
Moses and the patriarchs as shepherds, and 
Jesus born in a stable, an incident before 
mentioned, delicately reminiscent of animal 
associations, while early Christian mythology 
devised the fish as the symbol of the Christ, 
and associated each of the Gospel writers 
with an animal sacred to him. 

These facts, in addition to those given in 
Chapter III, will suffice, and we may con- 
sider such association as definitely estab- 
lished, proceeding to the next step: 

II. The Mass-Humanity Period 

As each heroic figure is, early in its pres- 
entation, associated with one or more an- 
imals, so each of them is presently associated 
117 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

with great multitudes of people. If we follow 
the story of Moses, we find him surrounded 
by the vast ocean of liberated Israel, which 
rises high above its restraining dikes in Egypt 
and pours in great waves into the deserts of 
the wilderness story. 1 



1 1 would like here to suggest a line of interpretation 
which may be valuable in relieving the student of the 
Sacred Record of the necessity of explaining more 
miracles than that Record actually contains, and in- 
cidentally to show once more the relation of this 
method of interpretation by Symbol-Psychology to 
interpretation of historic origins. Let me remind the 
reader that the essential value of a symbol resides in 
its meaning, and not in its historic origin. As I en- 
deavored to show in the fourth chapter, the value of 
the American flag lies in the fact that it symbolizes 
American institutions and citizenship, and not in the 
fact that once upon a time a lady named Betsy Ross, 
in a town called Philadelphia, did sew a few red strips 
of bunting on a white cloth, and a few white stars into 
a blue field. If we should some day find out that the 
lady's name was not Ross, but possibly something else, 
or that the house where it was first made was not on 
Arch Street, but down Laetitia Street way, or any 
other set of facts, it will in no wise invalidate the 

118 



SYMBOL- PSYCHO LOGY 

If we follow the figure of the Christ we find 
it in the centre of the vast multitudes, the 
five thousand and the four thousand, whom 
He feeds and teaches, heals and leads. If 
we follow the Buddh we find the "sacred 

efficiency of the American flag as a symbol. So the story 
of Elijah being fed by the Ravens gives us in broad 
outlines the instruction that the Divine Providence 
guards the principle represented by Elijah in the 
human mind in marvellous ways, and by means of the 
same element of food and drink which are introduced 
into various Bible stories, when we are told how 
Israel is fed in the desert, and of how the multitudes 
are fed by the Christ, or of how the "Bread of Faces" 
is daily set forth in the Tabernacle. The fact that 
God feeds the soul and its various faculties as He 
feeds the body and its various faculties remains the 
same whether Elijah was fed by Ravens or by Arabs, 
for the Hebrew term "Arabim" is more intelligently 
rendered by "Arabs" than it is by "Ravens," and 
there is one miracle less to explain, and a fact in historic 
garb will carry the inner meaning just as efficiently, 
perhaps a little more so. 

So with this ocean of humanity called the Sons of 
Israel. Suppose we think "in Orientalism" for a 
moment, and get the Egyptian idea of reed and sea — 
an idea of contempt as to their insignificance and 

II 9 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

valleys of Ind," filled with waiting and listen- 
ing throngs. If Ulysses, Romulus, ^Eneas, 
Arthur of the Round Table, Barbarossa, the 
Red- Beard of Germany, we find them all the 

stupidity — a sea of reeds. (For there is no Red Sea 
in the Bible — the "Mare Stiph" is a Reed Sea; 
some English cleric dropped an "e" from the Reed at 
some time by mistake, and students have since been 
religiously copying the error and devising all sorts 
of ingenious theories to color a sea red that was not 
red.) The teeming ocean of humanity, the mass of 
slaves, that rose in revolt in Egypt and marched forth 
into the Desert, would be, most naturally, to the Egyp- 
tian a sea of trembling reeds. But Moses was a ca- 
pable leader. He could plan an ingenious ambush 
for the pursuing hosts of the Pharaoh. He could 
divide his "human sea." and have it stand, like a wall, 
on both sides and close down on the Egyptian like an 
engulfing sea, and then sing a song "as touching" 
it all and then call the inspiration of the thought that 
made him think it and plan it an "East wind from 
Jehovah." Nothing more natural than that thus 
should a sea of reeds, slaves, armed with staves and 
rocks, engulf the pursuing hosts of the Pharaoh, and 
break the wheels off his chariots in the darkness behind 
the rocks, on the other side of which burned the watch- 
fires of the liberated horde of slaves. This tentative 

I20 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

centre of marching, fighting, struggling hosts. 
And thus is the second step established, and 
from it naturally follows the third step, 
namely : 

III. The Select Humanity-Period 

There will immediately occur both historic 
and mythologic evidences of this peculiar 

interpretation in no wise militates against the fact that 
in the internal sense the Sea of Suph or Reeds signifies 
the "hells," and that the Lord leads men out of these 
"hells." And it explains a series of incidents, without 
introducing an additional miracle, with its host of 
possible (and possibly) explanatory theories. To the 
mind of the writer it seems much more intelligible to 
think of the story in this way, and then have it 
Orientalized in symbol language, than to devise all 
sorts of possibilities whereby an east wind could have 
made the waters of a "red" sea stand up like walls 
hither and yon. It will be noted that the fact that 
God lifts and guides the soul of man upward, and out 
of the slavery of the flesh, is in no wise impaired by 
eliminating from the consideration the imagery of a 
miracle, wherever it can be done in consonance with 
reason and intelligence. 

121 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

feature of the law. It is natural, both in 
the world of physical things and in the world 
of mental things, that the centre and main- 
spring of any event or series of events should 
draw to himself or itself certain dominant 
humanities, certain leading men or traits, 
whereby to influence and control the sequence 
of things. In history this is quite common; 
a great general selects his staff, a king his 
councillors, a president his cabinet. A few 
names start forward from the background 
of the multitude and group themselves almost 
spontaneously about the central figure, no 
matter what historic event may be chosen 
as a study or as a type. This law governs 
humanity, so far as history and also so far as 
mentality are concerned. 

On the mental side we soon find the heroic 
centre of all stories and myths exercising 
a selective capacity (that selective capacity 
which made the Jews delight in the phrase, 

122 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

" My chosen people" and the Christian dream 
of and dogmatize about " the Elect "). The 
hero of the fairy tale, when he has set out 
upon his wanderings at an early stage, selects 
those men, women, and animals who are to 
form his retinue, and the smaller group be- 
comes distinct and separates from the larger. 
In the myth and legend it is the same. King 
Arthur surrounds himself with his Round 
Table ; Moses selects the seventy elders who 
are to rule with him ; the Christ gathers more 
nearly about Him the seventy and the twelve. 
There is no doubt as to this "selective 
affinity" which surrounds the Teacher with 
His immediate disciples and the martyr with 
his chosen few. And thus we pass to 

IV. The Lone Humanity-Period 

When the narrative has set forth at suf- 
ficient length the association and relation of 
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SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

the central figure with certain select and 
chosen characters and characteristics, these, 
too, are dropped, and the drama culminates 
with the central figure without companions, 
utterly alone. The prince in the fairy tale 
comes to his final test and trial altogether 
alone; the hero of the legend dies alone. 
Nowhere is this so frequently emphasized as 
in our Bible, the great drama of the Race- 
Man. See the solitary figure of Moses on 
Nebo, dying alone; the solitary figure of 
Aharon in the mountain, dying alone; the 
solitary figure of Elijah, who has left all his 
disciples, even Elisha behind him, and goes 
forth to his apotheosis alone ; see the solitary 
figure of the Christ in the hands of the 
Roman guard, his last disciple fleeing away, 
naked, and you have picture upon picture 
of this final denouement of the whole story, 
which emphasizes the fact that all else is left 
behind and naught reaches the final goal 
124 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

save the pure, simple, single humanity, about 
which all else was grouped. 

It seems scarcely necessary to develop the 
thought further, for you and I start upon life's 
journey here on the little foot-stool, with 
the emphasis placed uncomfortably upon the 
animal side of things, a helpless babe, with 
an incipient humanity deeply concealed with- 
in, and shining through the eyes and the 
smile, but with animal wants and needs 
and habits moving weirdly between the Dan 
and Beersheba of hunger and sleep. But 
presently that animal nature is dismissed 
into the background, and we are faced with 
a multitude of humanity. The incipient 
humanity within is surrounded by a host 
of teachers and books. A mass of human 
experiences, beginning with letters and num- 
bers, and ranging far and wide through his- 
tory, geography, science, and art; humanity 
alive and dead, recent and ancient, national 
125 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

and individual. Humanity in every shape 
and form crowds in upon the dawning human- 
ity at the centre of the soul-picture, and 
then the dawning humanity wakes into the 
broader day. The ego at the centre reaches 
out into the teeming mass of humanity about 
it, and selects and chooses such men and deeds 
as agree with it and help to formulate it in 
itself. The artist-soul reaches out into the 
seething mass and gathers in artistic im- 
pressions; the soul to music born reaches 
out and gathers a harvest of harmony, and 
so through all the gamut of human possi- 
bility. 

But finally, when all is said and done, you 
and I will stand revealed in our bare hu- 
manity. The curtain of death moves slowly 
and solemnly aside, and you and I step out 
into the further and larger life, our own 
bare, human selves — our Ego — that central 
something that was our very self from the 
126 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

beginning; the animal, the mass, and the 
chosen few are all dead — only the man 
lives and moves outward and upward into 
the light. 



VI 
THE CAPTIVE MAIDEN 

A MONG the stories handed down by tradi- 
iVtion among all peoples the "Captive 
Maiden" or the "Sleeping Maiden" is most 
charming. Typical of fairy -lore is the form 
called "The Sleeping Beauty," which reap- 
pears in a variety of fairy tales in all lands, 
ranging from the Karpathian mountains 
south to the end of Italy and from the coast 
of France to the foot-hills of the Himalayas. 
The maiden in some of the stories sleeps alone, 
in others everything belonging to her and to 
the castle of which she is the princess sleeps 
with her. In the delightful story of "Dorn 
Roeschen" (Briar-Rose) it will be remem- 
bered that all the people of the castle, from 
128 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

the King to the scullion, and all the living 
creatures, from the " horse in the stall to the 
fly on the wall," fall asleep. The scullion 
is seized with the magic sleep just as he is 
about to catch the fly on the wall, and the 
cook just as he is about to box the scullion's 
ear. Another typical story is that of 
" Schneewitchen " (Snow- White), in which 
the wicked queen succeeds in giving Snow- 
White the poisoned apple to eat. But the 
apple only puts her to sleep, and the dwarfs, 
who live in the mountains, find her awake as 
they are carrying her forth in her crystal 
coffin. And of these stories there are many. 
In the realm of saga the typical story is that 
of Brunhild (or Brynnhilda), who renounces 
the rights and privileges of deity in order 
to assume humanity, and who of her own 
volition ceases to be a goddess in order to be 
a woman. She, too, sleeps, and sleeps on the 
mountain-top (for almost all stories of sleepers 

9 129 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

are associated with the mountain) , and there 
she is surrounded by a ring of fire, which 
leaps forth from the spot where Wotan's 
spear touches the ground. Here she sleeps 
until she is awakened by Siegfried. 

Not all the sleepers are maidens. Some 
of them are men. But in the stories of the 
11 maiden" the " sleep-motif" is a more exalt- 
ed one, and therefore more deeply concealed 
than it is in the stories of sleeping men. 
There are many men, also, asleep in and on 
the mountain. Sometimes these stories of 
sleeping men are simply narratives calculated 
to insinuate into the thinking mind the con- 
tinuity of things. Of such a nature are the 
stories of Rip Van Winkle asleep in the 
Catskills ; of the Japanese youth whose story 
is very similar; of the Seven Sleepers of 
Ephesus, a story familiar to those who have 
given some time to the study of the legends of 
the Church. There is, however, another feat- 
130 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

ure about the stories of men asleep that is 
also easily recognizable. Many of the stories 
have a palpably political interest. Bar- 
barossa, the old, old Emperor of Germany, sits 
asleep in the mountain called Kyffhaeuser, 
and his great, red beard has grown round and 
round the rocky table before him. Two 
ravens fly out into his fatherland and return 
to tell him the news, and when they shall 
return and tell him that Germany is once again 
united and great, then will he awake and take 
up once again the sceptre of his Empire. 
This is evidently the dormant spirit of Ger- 
mania, and the story is not at all difficult 
to interpret. The same is true of King 
Arthur and several of the Knights of the 
Round Table, who are asleep on Mont Sal vat 
(the Mountain of Salvation), the story as 
the English tell it, and also the story of 
the French, for Charlemagne sleeps in the 
mountains of Normandy, waiting for the 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

shadow of the Corsican to grow less. These 
stories of men sleepers are more readily in- 
telligible than the stories of the captive 
maiden or of the dormant woman. There 
are several deductions for the student of 
symbol-psychology that can be derived from 
these stories, one of them resting upon this 
very fact last mentioned. Let us make these 
deductions in their proper order: 

i . In the first place, it is evident that these 
stories of dormant humanity are associated 
with mountains; hence in the experiences 
of life it is part of Race-Knowledge to look 
for the dormant faculties of mankind in high 
elevations; in other words, in symbolic lan- 
guage the geography of the mind borrows its 
pictures from the geography of the world. 
It is not an unfamiliar fact that the love for 
children is a higher and a nobler love than 
the love of dress or the love of money; that 
the love of country is more exalted than the 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

love of approbation. Some loves are higher 
than others, hence mountains and hills are 
used as images of love, and on these mountains 
and hills are dormant loves of which men 
know not for a time until they have, as 
Longfellow says, " toiled upward through the 
night." 

We all know of deeply latent affections 
and loves that spring into vivid wakefulness 
at some salient point in the life of man and 
how deeply (or exaltedly) latent they were ; 
hence mountains and the idea of struggle 
are associated with the dormant humanity 
pictured in the symbol stories. The idea of 
a differentiation in altitude (as struggle, 
effort, or temptation goes on) is most clearly 
set forth in the story of the temptation of 
Jesus, in which case the first struggle is said 
to have taken place in the plain or desert, 
the second on the pinnacle of the temple, 
and the third on the top of the mountain — 
133 



SYMBOL -PSYCHOLOGY 

an evident effort to set forth succinctly and 
in symbol language the fact that all effort 
and all struggle proceeds from a lower plane 
to a higher. On the side of intellect, a study 
of arithmetic, followed by algebra and calcu- 
lus, will illustrate these three steps from the 
lower to the higher, and, on the side of loves, 
the love of a doll, followed by the "so- 
called" school -girl love, and that by ma- 
ternity and its love of the babe, are three 
equally distinct steps. The first deduction 
to be made from the sleeper stories is that 
they are associated with what might be 
called degrees of altitude. 

2. The second deduction is that men 
sleepers are more intelligible than women 
sleepers. Hold in mind that men represent 
intellect and women love (as types), and 
it will be readily deducible that love lies 
deeper than intellect. This is so self-evident 
that it needs scarcely a word of comment. 
134 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

It is a matter of very little difficulty to 
understand that the intellect is a surface 
matter, and that it comes within the bound- 
aries of possible study. We can take it 
apart into memory, association, reason, im- 
agination, and the rest, and although we do 
not understand very much of it as yet, it 
bears no tokens of being at all beyond the 
possibility of comprehension. Not so the 
loves of man. They are now, and probably 
ever will be, beyond the limits of compre- 
hensibility, for, wherever we touch upon a 
vital process we meet with an undivided 
something which cannot be classified, ar- 
ranged, and tabulated as can matters intel- 
lectual. There is a something undivided, 
and, when called by its Latin name, it is " in- 
dividuum." It is wise, therefore, to call the 
real, dormant man an individual, and his 
other self, his acquired and externalized self, 
by some other name — say, identity, or person- 
135 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

ality. But names are neither here nor there. 
The fact remains that there is a "dormant 
factor" in man's character somewhere, and 
this factor has two distinct manifestations, 
one volitional, called a sleeping woman or 
captive maiden, and the other intellectual, 
called a dormant man or captive prince. 

So far we have gathered the two essential 
features from the various stories quoted, 
which same features can, of course, be found 
in the multitude of legends, sagas, fairy- 
tales, and symbol stories, ranging from the 
story of the maiden whom Christ raised from 
the dead, and of whom He said, " She is not 
dead, but sleepeth," down to the Gretel of 
the German fairy tale, who, with her brother 
Hansel, is held in fettered captivity by the 
witch of the forest. That the maiden in the 
Gospel narrative is a " higher type" is evi- 
dent from a brief consideration of the three 
cases of resurrection from the dead quoted in 
136 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

the Gospels. One is the daughter of Jairus, 
who is raised in the city (of the living) and 
in the upper story of the house, and in the 
presence of both her father and her mother ; 
in the second story, the resurrection of the 
son of the Widow of Nain, the action takes 
place on the road from the city of the living 
to the city of the dead, and only the mother 
is present ; while in the third story, the resur- 
rection of Lazarus, the action takes place in 
the city of the dead, and he "has been four 
days dead," and there is neither father nor 
mother. It is evident that there are three 
distinct conditions in which the Divine Com- 
passion can awaken the dormant humanity 
of man — one a condition where that dor- 
mant soul is young and sweet and clean ; the 
second where its outer mental shell has been 
somewhat in contact with the " dross" of 
the world; the third teaches the ability of 
that Divine Compassion to reach those souls 
i37 



SYMBOL -PSYCHOLOGY 

which seem to have been "four days dead." 
Those of us who come in contact with these 
"souls" of the so-called "submerged and 
lost" will take heart, that although the 
Church doubts the ability of God to "raise 
this Lazarus" who has been so long dead, the 
Gospel does not, and possibly it is wise to 
give the Gospel precedence. 

Now, let us try to reason out the dim lines 
of thought wherefrom the Race- Brain built 
up these stories. In all of the captive 
maiden stories there is a faintly outlined 
character introduced, usually called "the 
witch." In most cases she is simply an 
opposing element, inimical to everything else 
involved in the story. In the story of Brun- 
hild this character is taken by Freya; in 
most of the other stories, however, it is the 
"witch" pure and simple. This feature at 
first strikes the student as one of an un- 
pleasant nature, but after further investi- 
138 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

gations along the lines laid down by Karl 
Pearson and others, he comes to the con- 
clusion that the "witch" is a word actually 
derived from " Wit an," which is the German 
"Wissen," and therefore stands for the ele- 
ment of "wisdom." Now, let us look at the 
sleeping and dormant faculties in man in 
that light. There is a certain element of wis- 
dom involved in the construction of a human 
body, and in the locking up within it of cer- 
tain latent or dormant faculties. That the 
faculties, and the organs which carry these 
faculties, are dormant, is evident from a con- 
templation of them in their pre-natal con- 
dition. There is, a few days or a few hours 
before birth, a fully formed brain, but it 
does not think ; a pair of fully formed lungs, 
but they do not breathe; a fully formed 
heart, but it does not yet beat, and so forth. 
The body of man, just a little before birth, 
is fully formed, but none of its organs are 
139 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

as yet active ; they are waiting for the kiss 
of the outer air, that will rush into the lungs 
and innate them, close the little trap in the 
wall of the heart, and start up the circulation 
and presently make the little brain see and 
hear, and think and act. Hence, just before 
birth it might be said that the " wicked 
witch," or wisdom, is holding all the organs 
and their faculties captive ; they are dor- 
mant, but they will presently awake. In 
other words, a whole line of nature-interpre- 
tation for this kind of story is opened. We 
need only think of the heart as being the 
dormant maiden, and the lungs as being the 
dormant man, and we have the two sleepers 
as heretofore evolved. 

But mental life corresponds to physical 
life. ''The two dreams are one dream," as 
Joseph says to the Pharaoh. What is true 
of physical things is equally true of mental 
things; during childhood and youth there 
140 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

is a dormant man growing within. The 
organs of observation, of reasoning, the sense 
of responsibility, the sense of sex-life, the 
exercise of prudence, and many other dor- 
mant human traits are waiting the inrush 
of mental air, which comes with the " second 
birth," as the Church quite properly calls 
the awakening of manhood. As soon as the 
real man within awakes, all these faculties 
come into play and are awake ; therefore the 
stories of the captive maiden and the sleeping 
men refer to the period which precedes the 
awakening of manhood, and all the vari- 
ous details which go to make up the story 
become perfectly intelligible as soon as this 
central and pivotal thought is held in mind. 
We add, therefore, to the facts hitherto 
established, that the Race-Man has always 
recognized the dual nature of man, and has, 
therefore, written, symbol stories of "Twin 
Brothers"; that it has always realized that 
141 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

the duality in man consisted of a side 
turned outward and called the animal and 
of a side turned inward and called man, 
and that hence the "Man-Animal" symbol 
story came into being ; the fact that the true 
effort of living and of life is to "climb in- 
ward" into one's true and real nature, and 
the effort so made was set forth in the jour- 
neys, wherein the animal side and the mass 
of human impress was gradually laid by, and 
the single, individual humanity stood re- 
vealed in all simplicity; and that that hu- 
manity had always been dormant, waiting in 
the heart of man, and that its virgin purity 
constitutes the " Sleeping or Captive Maiden." 
Let us now examine into the broad lines 
of the ascending and descending forces which 
come into play as this Symbol Drama is 
being enacted. 



VII* 
GODS, HEROES, DWARFS, AND GIANTS 

THE superficial student of mythology is 
pleased with the sequence of pictures 
given in the stories, with the symmetry, 
beauty, art, and harmony displayed in them, 
and with the grace of adjustment, the gentle 
sympathy, the keen wit, or the bold hardi- 
hood of the story, as the case may be. That 
read and appreciated is all that he looks for, 
and there he stops. In exactly the same 
way the observer of Nature takes in the 
glory of a sunset on the horizon line; of a 
beautiful landscape with its trees and moun- 
tains, its rivers and lakes, its dwellings, 

1 This chapter originally appeared as a separate 
article in Mind (New York), July and August, 1903. 

143 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

and the lowing of the kine and the bark of 
the dog; beyond that he is not interested. 
But the scientist recognizes, back of these 
beauties, certain laws and forces which he 
has resolved into an analysis, which, although 
not the ultimate analysis, is an analysis de- 
serving of the name. He has traced back the 
beauty, harmony, grace, and symmetry of 
natural things, a certain set of laws and 
forces. Why should not the student of 
mythology see, back of the mental imagery 
projected upon the background of history, a 
similar set of forces and laws? As in things 
physical there is a certain something, called 
"gravitation, vibration, heat, osmosis," why 
should there not be back of all mentality such 
things as justice, kindness, friendship, wis- 
dom, utility? Why should not one of these 
sets be just as much of a series of forces as 
the other? 

Basing upon this consideration, without 
144 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

further deliberation of it, it seems to me that 
the historic background apparently given to 
symbolic pictures, and the historic variety of 
the people who made the myths, invented 
the sagas, and shaped the figures, should 
count for much in one way and for little in 
the other. If I study Shakespeare's Ham- 
let or King Lear, I am interested in the hu- 
manity of the men, not in the question of 
their historicity, and I try to understand 
what Shakespeare meant by placing these 
bold figures into the framework of circum- 
stances, a combination which he weaves 
about them, for Shakespeare was an intel- 
ligent man, and he evidently had a pur- 
pose in writing both " Hamlet" and "King 
Lear," as much of a purpose as Balzac 
had in writing La Comedie Humaine or Ib- 
sen had in writing A D oil's House. But 
if these men have intelligent purposes in 
their writing, is that intelligent purpose to 
145 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

be denied the Greeks when they write the 
story of Zeus, or of Hephaistos, or of Hera? 
Is it to be denied to the Roman when he 
writes the story of Mercury, or of Silenus, or 
of Hercules? Or is it to be denied to the 
Hindoo when he writes the story of Vishnu, 
or of Rama? Or is it to be denied to the 
Egyptian when he writes the story of Isis, 
Osiris, and Horus? For are not all these in- 
telligent people? Are not Seneca or Sopho- 
cles as intelligent as Shakespeare; and An- 
tigone and Oedipus as truly symbolic as 
the sombre Dane or the miraculous Scotch- 
man? Therefore, historic variety really goes 
to show rather the intelligence of the people 
who made the myth than the historic truth 
of the myth itself. And, on the other hand, 
it may be safely assumed that, in the creation 
of the wonderful figures of gods and heroes, of 
dwarfs and giants, the makers of mythology 
acted as intelligently in the very making 
146 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

of these myths as they did in the making of 
geometry, in the harmonies of music, in the 
production of laws, all of which they did 
equally well with the making of myths. It 
would be stultifying to the intelligence of 
these men if we were to think of an Egyptian 
believing in a literal Isis, or Osiris, or Horus ; 
or a Greek believing in a similar trinity 
called Zeus and Poseidon and Pluto. 

Admitting the intelligence of myth-makers, 
and the evident purpose inspiring their other 
literary efforts, it may be safely assumed, 
also, that there is not only intelligent effort, 
but also intelligent purpose back of the 
myth. And one of the most satisfactory 
ways of arriving at intelligent purpose is that 
adopted in mathematics when there is a 
question of number or the relationship of 
number. Given a number of fractions, or a 
number of roots, or a number of involutions 
or evolutions, we resort to the process called 
i47 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

"the finding of the common factor," and as 
soon as we have found a common factor in 
any one of its forms, either as a denominator, 
or a multiple, or a differential relation, we 
can proceed to the solving of a number of 
problems all containing this common factor 
or common process. 

The common factor is not at all an un- 
known thing in mythology. Every one 
knows that the stories of a paradise, and the 
stories of a deluge, and the stories of the 
Incarnation, and the stories of the Fratricide, 
and the stories of Virgin Nativity, and the 
stories of transmutations or changes from 
one form into another, and other stories, are 
common property of all nations. Sometimes 
we can see how one story in a certain series 
grew out of the other through the fact of the 
migration of peoples and ordinary historic 
consequence. Sometimes we cannot. In 
either case the resemblance in the story is 
148 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

sufficiently close to permit us to think that, 
whether there be external, historic, or chrono- 
logical sequence or not, the similarity does 
not depend upon these two factors. It de- 
pends rather upon the generally coincident 
activity of human mentality. In other 
words, as the same idea comes to three, four, 
or five inventors at the same time anywhere 
on the foot-stool, so the same idea may occur 
to different nations at or about the same 
time, no matter whereabouts on the earth 
they may be located. Thought generated 
in the race-mind doubtless proceeds exactly 
in the same way and according to the same 
lines as thought generated in the individual. 
Hence, when we find a story common prop- 
erty among various nations, and find that 
we cannot follow the lines laid down by stu- 
dents of mythology, whose aim it is to trace 
the origin of one story from another, or of 
the same story in one nation from the same 
149 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

story in another nation, we can feel perfectly 
at liberty to think that the same story can 
arise independently in different sections of 
the race-mind at one and the same time. 
On this assumption it may be of interest to 
the reader to follow the sequence of thought 
which is here to be given. 

In the vast mass of matter there is a cer- 
tain quantity of material which is distinctly 
impersonal and another quantity quite dis- 
tinctly personal. It is to this latter cate- 
gory that we turn our attention in this ar- 
ticle. Evidently there is personality about 
the stories of the gods, and a similar per- 
sonality holds true in the stories of heroes. 
In the same way there is personality about 
giants and personality about dwarfs. About 
this centralized group of personalities hovers 
a cloud of partly human, partly animal fig- 
ures, and around these are grouped series of 
animal figures, distinctly so, and around 
150 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

these again come foggy and indistinct figures, 
both artificial and natural. Such figures as 
Zeus, Apollo, Juno, and Venus are distinctly 
personal as Deities ; and such figures as Per- 
seus, Theseus, and Herakles are evidently per- 
sonal among the heroes ; and such figures as 
Goliath, and the giants of Norse mythology, 
and the Children of the Emim, and Ymir, 
and others are evidently personal; and the 
seven dwarfs that take care of Schneewitt- 
chen, and Alberich, and many others are 
equally personal. This is the inner group of 
four sets of personality. In the concentric 
circle, lying immediately about this group, 
and composed of figures all combining the 
human and the animal, there are many that 
must be quite familiar to the reader. The 
Centaur, the Sphinx, Minotaur, Dagon, the 
Fish God, and the strange, composite figures 
seen by Ezekiel, and called Cherubim, all be- 
long evidently to this group; while the 
151 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

serpent, whether called Satan, or Fafnir, or 
Loke, and the lion, and the unicorn, and the 
eagle, and the raven, and the dove, and Apis, 
the bull, and the swan, and other animals are 
similarly in evidence as animals without very 
distinct reference to humanity except in their 
association with humanity. And Miolnir, 
hammer of Thor, and the Tarnkappe, which 
renders folks invisible, and the staff in the 
hand of Moses or of ^Eskulap, and the altar 
of incense, and the tabernacle, and other ob- 
jects are evidently artificial without reference 
to personality, except so far as their associa- 
tion with the personal element of those who 
handle them ; while again, the waves of the 
sea, and the flame of fire, and the flash of 
lightning, and the roll of thunder, and the 
mountain, and the tree, and the egg, and the 
precious stone, as they are introduced in 
symbology and mythology, are evidently 
forces and objects from nature. 
152 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

Taking up the group of personality which 
stands in the centre of these concentric rings, 
and which naturally falls into the fourfold 
form, as do the points of the compass, or the 
ages of man, or the seasons' of the year, or 
the times of the day, or the four right angles 
at the centre of a circle, or the quadrature 
of the Holy City, we find ourselves facing 
four distinct sets of beings in all mythology. 
There is one set which is evidently designed 
to represent a something generated on the 
side of mind and another set a something 
generated on the side of matter. In the 
broad dualism of antiquity and of modern 
days, the gods represented in their totality 
mental traits. They are evidently the off- 
spring of the effort made by the race-mind 
to understand abstract spirituality. Let us 
take up this idea a little more at large. 

It is evident in quite a number of cases 
that the writers and creators of sagas and 
*53 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

legends aim distinctly at spirituality and 
at mental traits. There is no doubt that the 
story of the birth of Minerva, as told by the 
Greeks, is not a nature myth. Its design 
is evidently to portray the fact that wisdom 
springs from intelligence after intelligence 
has observed caution, for Jupiter, after de- 
vouring Metis, gives birth to Minerva in the 
peculiar way that is told of him — namely, 
Vulcan splits his head with the hammer and 
the goddess is born, fully armed and fully 
equipped. Quite evidently the creators of 
this story used these personified traits to 
represent the fact that man becomes wise 
only when caution is associated with intelli- 
gence. They also involve the idea that wis- 
dom is an intuitive something, born fully 
shaped. Here we have a story designed 
to convey the operation of mental forces. 
When we read the same story in Hebrew 
mythology, and read that Eve is formed 
i54 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

from the rib of Adam, we find a story- 
more closely associated with natural ob- 
jects, and yet we suspect that it is no more 
a nature myth than was the other. If Jove 
gives birth to Minerva from the head, and 
if the Greek insists upon this arrangement, 
why should not the Hebrew be at liberty 
to insist upon the fact that Adam gives birth 
to Eve from the heart? For the skull of 
Jupiter evidently stands for the brain and 
is so accepted. Why should not the rib of 
Adam stand for the heart and be so accepted ? 
Look upon the matter itself. The intui- 
tive side of man's nature gives birth to a 
peculiar affectional wisdom, but with some 
that wisdom springs from intelligence — that 
is, from the head, while with others it springs 
from love — that is, from the heart. The 
father who says the right word to the way- 
ward boy just at the right time acts from 
wisdom born of intelligent experience. The 
155 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

mother who does for her baby just the right 
thing in an hour of peril, without instruction 
and without previous experience, acts from 
a similar wisdom begotten of love. It would 
be perfectly natural in reading the Greek 
story to look for its companion-piece some- 
where and to feel rather grateful to the 
Hebrew for furnishing it. This method of 
interpreting renders the story more intel- 
ligible and more dignified. Any interpre- 
tation involving too great a share of literal- 
ness in these stories results disastrously, and 
reason does not always feel satisfied with the 
results so disastrously obtained. 

Take another story. Hephaestus (Vulcan) 
is lamed because he has been thrown from 
Olympus. Jacob is lamed because he has 
wrestled with an angel. In the one legend 
the natural impulses of man, as evidently 
represented by Vulcan and Jacob (let the 
reader follow the entire reasoning process of 

156 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

Jacob, in which he indulges in all his associa- 
tions with Jehovah and Esau and Laban and 
any of the other personalities with whom 
he is brought in contact), are said to be 
lamed by the fact that they are dissociated 
or associated with spiritual powers ; for Vul- 
can is thrown out from the seat of the gods, 
while in the other case it is said that Jacob 
is lamed because of his too intimate asso- 
ciation with spiritual forces, represented by 
the angel. Which of the two stories is the 
more correct? Is man's natural mentality 
shown to be lamed by dissociation with 
spiritual things or by association with spir- 
itual things? I think the answer is "both," 
for nothing is so lame or so utterly in- 
competent as a materialistic or a natural- 
istic mind absolutely devoid of spirituality. 
And, again, nothing is so thoroughly lame 
as that same mind when it wrestles with a 
spiritual question. The two legends are the 
157 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

two aspects of the same question, for the 
natural side of man's mentality, with its 
necessary concomitants, the conception of 
space and time, of duration and extent, of 
substantiality and materiality, of matter 
and forces, of condition, relation, and se- 
quence is not by nature outfitted to really 
grasp the essence of justice, mercy, sympa- 
thy, kindness, and other distinctively spir- 
itual things. Hence both the Roman and 
the Hebrew are perfectly right in their con- 
ception of natural mentality, which they calj 
Vulcan and Jacob. 

Any one studying the personality of the 
gods will note immediately a certain number 
of coincident factors. There is, in the 
enumeration of the gods, an evident desire 
to subordinate one to the other, and in all 
mythology there is created a series of demi- 
gods, who represent lower mental faculties; 
and the student instantly recalls the fact 

i 5 8 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

that memory is a lower faculty than reason, 
and that reason is a lower faculty than in- 
tuition, and that intuition is a lower faculty 
than love. Hence the mind naturally adopts 
the theory of subordination in the mental 
regions. In the same way there is always 
a peculiar association of mental faculties — 
memory associates with reason readily. It 
is exceedingly disloyal to intuition and re- 
fuses to associate readily. Hence, among the 
gods, there are loves and enmities. Again, 
one mental faculty is able to accomplish a 
thing in only one way, another has a variety 
of ways of doing the same thing. Memory 
can only remember, and the deity represent- 
ing memory can do only one thing. But 
reason can be exercised in almost any direc- 
tion, and the deity representing reason (for 
instance, Mercury) is portrayed as being ex- 
ceedingly versatile and ready to adapt itself 
to any set of circumstances. A thief reasons 
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SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

by the same faculty as does an honest man, 
and a burglar who breaks open a safe and the 
man who builds a safe use exactly the same 
method of reasoning. Hence Mercury's ver- 
satility is not confined always to the regions 
of honesty. He is as ready to be dishonest 
as he is to be honest. 

But among all the things said of deities, 
the main, vital point is that in which they all 
coincide — namely, their tendency earthward 
in one form or another. The tendency of 
deity is downward. Whether this tendency 
take the form of a general interest in human 
affairs, or whether it take any other of the 
strange, weird, fantastic, or beautiful forms 
under which these ideas come to us, the idea 
itself is always there. The gods associate 
with men. They descend to them. They 
leave Olympus, Valhal, or Heaven; they 
descend to take an active interest and an 
active part in the affairs of earth, or they 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

become incarnate on earth. In some of the 
narratives this incarnation takes place once, 
in others it occurs frequently. The Hindoo 
thinks of Brahm as descending in no less than 
ten incarnations. Each of these incarnations 
is distinct. They are six hundred years 
apart. The last incarnation is said to be 
that of the white horse. The Roman thinks 
the same thought ; the Greek thinks the same 
thought. The stories sound differently, but 
they all convey the same idea. 

Deity is associated with the woman side 
of humanity in various repetitions. To the 
eye that has been trained to see what the 
Greek really meant by his stories, the repeat- 
ed incarnations of deity means simply the 
manifold way in which that peculiar some- 
thing which we call spirit or mind or deity 
or God manifests itself. For evidently the 
divine spark shows in one way when it 
strikes the soul of an artist or a musician ; it 

ii 161 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

shows in another when it strikes the soul 
of a mechanic or an inventor; in another 
when it comes to the soul of the book -worm ; 
in yet another when it comes to the soul of 
the physician, the lawyer, the clergyman, the 
orator, the actor; in still another when it 
comes to the warped soul of the miser, or to 
the unhealthy mind of the roue. In other 
words, Jove has, from the very nature of the 
case, a number of manifestations. Some of 
them are deeply concealed in the inmost re- 
cesses of the soul. The divine afflatus, the 
secret and silent mystery that rings through 
poetry, that hovers beyond the background 
of painting, that quivers on the edge of music, 
that mysterious impulse comes secretly. And 
the Hindoo writes the story of Maya and 
how her child is born of a ray of light. And 
the Greek writes the story of Danae, deeply 
concealed and hidden from all men and gods 
in a cave, and of how her child is born of a 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

golden rain. And the Hebrew writes the 
story of the fierce Tishbite and of the still, 
small voice that comes after the angry rage 
of elements. It matters not through what 
particular brain the race-mind seeks expres- 
sion, it always tells the same story. In other 
words, there is a series of the incarnations 
of deity or a series of the settings forth of 
the spirit which come secretly. On the 
other hand, there is a series of such incar- 
nations that is set forth, not in the beauty 
of rhetoric, or of art, or of music, but in the 
actual physical beauty of created things — ■ 
the beauty of a physical body, the harmo- 
nizing lines that build up the symmetrical 
something which we call "grace," the beau- 
tiful outlines of a landscape against its 
horizon, the mane crest of the horses of 
Neptune in the sea. All of these things are 
physical forms. They are not distinctly 
human, yet they are alive. The only type 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

which connects these two ideas of something 
that is not necessarily human, and yet alive, 
is the animal type. Hence the gods are 
sometimes incarnated as animals, sometimes 
associated with animals, or animals are 
" sacred to them," as we have learned to call 
it. Nor does this close the list of the incar- 
nations, since that divine something, which 
we have learned to call " Deity, God, a 
Supreme Being, or a Spirit of the Universe," 
manifests itself in the absolutely pure har- 
monies of the universe itself ; in the harmonic 
rhythm of the trees that sway when the 
north wind sings its rune song; in the lash 
of the waves on the shore ; in the throb of 
song that lifts the veil of morning from the 
hidden nests of birds ; in the weird concert of 
the summer night, when God's orchestra tunes 
up in meadow and bog and forest. Hence 
there must be an incarnation of deity in 
mythology which comes in the form of forces 
164 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

of nature or in the shapes of the vegetable 
kingdom, and the lotus incarnation and the 
Ymir incarnation become intelligible factors. 
In fact, deity is manifest throughout crea- 
tion to the race-mind, and the student is 
inclined to see, in what was at one time 
considered a multitude of gods or idols, 
simply the multiple expression of unital 
deity, just as the scientist of to-day is a 
little inclined to see, in the various forms of 
forces, a manifold manifestation of unital 
force. 

Alongside of the two distinct tendencies 
of the gods — one to descend to earth and 
the other to become incarnate on earth — 
there runs a scarlet thread of parthenogenesis ; 
for there seems to be a keen intuition in the 
race-mind that there are certain sections of 
the human mind which are not fit receptacles 
for the pure and unalloyed influence of those 
higher forces which we have named " Deity." 
16S 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

There is a sordid and greedy and reckless 
and callous side to humanity which is unfit 
for publication, and into this, as the race- 
mind perceives, the divine would naturally 
refuse to flow, as naturally as electricity or 
magnetism or heat or light refuses to flow 
over, through, and into certain substances. 
As there are conductors and non-conductors 
for physical forces, so there must be con- 
ductors and non-conductors for mental 
forces. A clean, human force refuses to 
travel through the unclean side of a human 
mind for the same reason that electricity 
refuses to travel through glass or rubber. 
And the race-mind has chosen to speak of 
the clean side, the conductor side of the 
human mind, as the virgin side of that mind, 
and, therefore, logically insists that deity 
shall always be born of a virgin. In other 
words, it follows its own analogies to their 
logical climax (as says the sentence, "The 
166 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

pure in heart shall see God") in various 
ways, by telling the various stories of the 
virgin birth of its saviors. 

If the conclusions thus far reached are at 
all legitimate, and there is a descending ten- 
dency recognizable in the spiritual forces, 
mythologically called "Deities," the mind 
would naturally conclude that there should 
be an upward tendency in the natural forces, 
clothed by mythology in the garb of heroes. 
This from the simple necessities of antith- 
esis. We anticipate, therefore, that a hero 
in mythology should constantly struggle up- 
ward from a lowly, usually obscure, origin 
to his ultimate, usually violent, end, and then 
ascend from the grave to the stars, either 
as a constellation in the sky, or as a canonized 
saint, or as a figure risen from the dead, or 
as any one of those peculiarly familiar forms 
of imagery whereby the race-mind insists 
upon the ultimate elevation of human nature 
167 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

to spirituality, with the same urgency where- 
with it insists upon the final manifestation 
set forth in natural forms of all the spiritual 
forces whereof it has any conception. In other 
words, deity tends towards humanity; the 
highest types of humanity tend towards 
deity. Again, in other words, gather the 
whole set of pictures together, and they evi- 
dently group themselves about the twofold 
idea that there is either a God-man or a 
man-God, both of which are simply the syn- 
thetic and the analytic expression of the 
primal duality, and of a possible Divine 
Humanity. 

Let me recall to the reader the elements 
already gone over and associate them anew. 

If we trace the lives of the heroes, and 
there are many — Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, 
and many others — we again come across a 
certain number of common factors. In the 
first place, there is a constant factor of 
168 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

journeying and laboring. Every hero wan- 
ders. He either sets forth in quest of ad- 
venture of his own accord, or he is sent 
forth by the gods to do certain set tasks, or 
by the king, or by the evil principle, frequent- 
ly represented as a witch or a magician or a 
giant. He seldom sets out alone ; most fre- 
quently he is surrounded by a certain num- 
ber of animals, whom he gathers about 
him through certain service rendered, and 
who, in times of peril, reward him by a 
return of similar service. He is surrounded 
by humanity in larger or smaller multitudes. 
When so surrounded he is, from the very 
beginning of the story, the central figure of 
the entire narrative, as in the story of 
Ulysses, ^Eneas, Buddha, King Arthur, and 
others. As the story progresses, the solitary 
figure of the hero becomes more and more 
pronounced, and the multitude dwindles 
away more or less swiftly. This is particu- 
169 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

larly true with the figure of the Christ, in 
the dramatic life of whom there is a narrow 
ring of twelve disciples immediately about 
his person, and a wider belt of seventy dis- 
ciples a little more remote, and a yet wider 
belt, called " the multitudes," the people who 
follow him, and who are fed, exhorted, and 
cured by him. This multitude and these two 
sets of disciples gradually melt away from the 
central figure as the narrative progresses, un- 
til at the end he struggles in the Garden 
entirely alone. One almost suspects that the 
race-mind in all of these stories has pictured 
forth its intuitive acquaintance with the fact 
that man, during his pilgrimage on earth, is 
surrounded by a certain amount of animal 
and human nature, and by a series of factors 
called ' ' heredity, " " environment, ' ' ' ' chance, ' ' 
and " circumstance," "the course of events," 
etc., against all of which and with all of 
which he struggles, until in the end true 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

manhood is attained. This manhood then 
stands, of course, as a solitary figure at the 
end of the story, and is uplifted into ide- 
ality, and passes through one or the other 
form of anthropomorphic glorification. If 
the series of labors undertaken by the hero 
are closely scrutinized and compared, it will 
be found that he is invariably ordered to 
descend into hell at some stage of his work — 
Hercules to conquer Cerberus, Orpheus to 
reclaim Eurydice, Hermes to plead for the 
restoration of Proserpina, ^Eneas to see his 
father Anchises. Where the statement is not 
included in the popular traditional form of 
the mythology or theology of the people, it 
is added by the race-mind by some other 
method of formulation. Thus the tradi- 
tional stories of the New Testament, in the 
case of Christianity, furnish no direct state- 
ment of the descent of Christ into hell, but 
the creed of the Church has supplied that 
171 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

point. Evidently the race-mind, typifying 
the struggle of man to gain the victory over 
himself, and to educate and train himself, 
has realized that in the progression of that 
struggle somewhere there is a descent into 
the lower depths of being. What man at- 
tains by sinking into the lower depths is a 
matter of difference of opinion. It is some- 
times the element of watchfulness, repre- 
sented by Cerberus; it is sometimes one of 
the other factors of human character which 
he is supposed to attain by such descent. 
Over land and sea, in the air, in the garden, 
and on the mountain, those struggles con- 
tinue. When they are on the land, they are 
most frequently with men and animals; 
on sea, they are most frequently with the 
dangers natural to the sea — the storm, the 
Scylla and Charybdis, the Siren song, the 
island of Circe, and the giant Polyphemus. 
When they take place in the air, or the hero 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

flies through the air to get to them, they are 
mostly with composite creatures, with the 
Sphinx, with the Gorgo, with the Centaur, 
the Minotaur, with the Cherub, and others. 
Perseus flies through the air to struggle with 
Medusa, Ezekiel flies through the air to 
struggle with the problem of the strange, 
composite creature with four heads, six 
wings, the body of a man, and the feet of 
a calf, which is called a "Cherub." These 
latter features of the stories, and the insist- 
ence of the race-mind in associating flight 
through the air with composite creatures, 
first calls attention to the possible fact of 
concealed inner meaning within these strange 
stories. The struggles on the mountain, or 
up the mountain-side, usually involve the 
finding of a sleeper at the top. The Ameri- 
can legend of Rip Van Winkle, and its set- 
ting in the Cat skills seems, at first, acci- 
dental, but when the Prince struggles up the 
173 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

mountains to find the Sleeping Beauty at 
the top, and Siegfried struggles up the moun- 
tain to find Brunhilda at the top, and when 
the German Emperor, Barbarossa, is said to 
be asleep in the mountain, and when Christ, 
after his struggle in the Garden, that lies on 
the mountain, comes back to find his dis- 
ciples asleep, the student naturally sets aside 
the idea of coincidence and associates the 
idea of the mountain with dormant things. 
Recall the tendency of the human mind to 
speak of things being high and of things 
being low. There are certain low stand- 
ards of life, and there are certain high 
standards of life. An ordinary human life, 
therefore, has its valleys and its mountains. 
The valleys are the ordinary dwelling-places 
of men ; in them man is conscious and awake ; 
the higher levels of his consciousness are 
quite frequently dormant until they are 
aroused by some specialized effort or by 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

some specific work. If the higher levels be 
called "mountains," and the idea of dor- 
mant faculties be called "sleepers," there 
will be no difficulty mythologically in as- 
sociating mountains with sleepers, and in 
recognizing the fact that the race-mind con- 
sistently expresses itself, whether that ex- 
pression comes through a Greek or a Roman 
or a Scandinavian or a Hebrew channel. 

These two factors — the factor of struggling 
over a certain area of territory, surrounded 
by a multitude which gradually disappears, 
leaving a solitary figure, and the idea of the 
coincidence of certain levels on which these 
struggles take place — indicate that the race- 
mind emphasizes two factors in the making 
of a man. One is that he must struggle on all 
the various levels of consciousness and exist- 
ence, and the other is that he attains always 
the one end, and that is absolute solidarity 
and unity of his individualized self. 
i75 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

So we have considered the general down- 
ward tendency of spiritual or mental forces, 
and the general upward tendency of natural 
or physical forces, as portrayed by the race- 
mind in the various stories of the gods and 
of the heroes. The latter process we have 
learned to call " evolution," and we have 
been enabled to recognize quite a number 
of the steps taken on the physical side of 
nature to attain certain organic structures 
which will be keen and alert to respond to 
mental or spiritual impulses. The other 
process is as yet unfamiliar. It will have 
to be called ''involution" by appropriate 
apposition. I suspect that we are on the 
verge of discovering some of its laws and 
processes, and that it lies largely in the 
hands of those students of mental forces 
who are investigating the new psychology, 
and are watching the various activities of 
the mind and taking cognizance of the now f a- 
176 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

miliar layerings of consciousness — the group- 
ing of ideas by association, the mysterious 
automatism, and the psychic centres in the 
brain along the medulla, and the ganglionic 
centres along both of the spinal axes. 

Given the two pictures in their broad out- 
lines of the action and reaction of mental 
and physical things, as represented in gen- 
eral by deity and humanity in mythological 
pictures, we have a dual outcome. We have 
gods and men struggling with giants and 
dwarfs. Evidently these giants are repre- 
sentations of the gigantic forces of nature 
and of spirit, while the dwarfs are equivalent 
representations of the minute forces of nature 
and of spirit. Thus, for instance, the giant, 
interpreted according to nature-phenomena, 
would represent the gigantic thing known 
as the law of gravitation, which holds tre- 
mendous bodies in place over immeasurable 
distances, and the forces represented by the 
177 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

mystic formula, " centripetal" and "centrif- 
ugal" forces, a pair of twin giants, eminently 
deserving the name, and if Norse mythology 
speaks of Fafnir and Fasolt, and tells of their 
struggle one against the other, the story is 
not so very inappropriate in any one of its 
details. If interpreted on the spiritual side, 
the giant figure becomes some gigantic human 
factor such as the element of maternity or 
the element of mother love, or the element 
of patriotism, of loyalty to certain standards, 
of fear, of curiosity, of any one of those gi- 
gantic human traits that are present through- 
out the race and that have such tremendous 
power. Contrast the hardihood and bravery 
born of mother love with the craven coward- 
ice begotten of fear, and you have again two 
twin giants of tremendous proportions — tre- 
mendous not only in their extent and dura- 
tion, for they cover the earth and have lasted 
ever since it began, but also tremendous as 
178 






SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

to their effects in individual cases or in 
cases of race-life. 

The dwarf, when interpreted from the side 
of nature-forces, represents the entire micro- 
scopic world, and all of the mysteries covered 
by our ordinary scientific cloak, designated 
as cohesion and adhesion, and chemism, bio- 
plastic changes, and other such cloaks and 
gowns. And when interpreted according to 
spiritual standards, the dwarf represents the 
minute processes of the sensorium, the won- 
derful multiplicity and minuteness of im- 
pressions, the marvels of sight and seeing, 
the miracles of hearing and touch and taste, 
the infinitesimal factor called " odor," where- 
by a grain of musk, scarcely perceptible in 
itself, fills a room with odor for years without 
appreciable loss. 

There can be, consequently, no serious dif- 
ficulty in understanding the relative values 
of these two factors in the entire picture. 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

Sometimes the gods require the exercise of 
gigantic forces for the upbuilding of what they 
propose, and the giants are compelled to build 
Valhal. Sometimes a man's mental side — 
that is, " the gods," is reported as struggling 
with physical nature, and the familiar story 
of the Titans is born. Sometimes the gods re- 
quire the help of the minute forces of nature, 
and Loge and Wotan descend into the cave 
of Niflheim to find the ring and the Tarn- 
helm. And sometimes man's spiritual side — 
that is to say, the gods, must struggle with 
the dwarfish powers of nature, but he must 
do so always by ingenuity and cunning, and 
not by force, as witness the story of Sieg- 
fried and Mime. 

The entire picture, therefore, resolves it- 
self into the fact that mental forces seek 
externalization or ultimation in nature ; that 
the gods tend downward towards incarnation, 
and that physical forces tend upward towards 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

the evolvement of a physical form that will 
respond to spiritual impulses, and that both 
these forces, on their way upward and down- 
ward, ascending and descending the ladder 
that reaches from earth to heaven, according 
to our story, are ready to meet both the 
gigantic and the minute forces of nature and 
of spirit as represented by giants and dwarfs. 



VIII 
THE ARCHITECTURE OF SOULS 

WHAT a mass of the " common factor" 
there is when the careful investigator 
begins to collect the stories — men and ani- 
mals, gods and heroes, dwarfs and giants, 
journeys and tasks, the desert and the sea, 
sleep and waking, the life-token, the element 
of change, men changing into animals, rods 
into serpents, dwarfs into lizards, the ele- 
ment of escape and pursuit, and a hundred 
others But in this chapter we concern 
ourselves with building — the architecture 
of souls. 

Let me again impress upon the reader the 
facts studied in previous chapters. The 
Race-Mind notes that there are two natures, 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

and it tells of Twin Brothers; that the two 
natures differ, and it tells of the Man-Animal 
association and combination ; that deep with- 
in the inmost of every plane of life there is 
a centre of vitality, a life-token; that the 
centre of spiritual vitality lies dormant, deep 
in the soul, and is called the " Sleeping or 
Captive Maiden"; that the effort to arouse 
it is pictured by a journey fringed with 
varying adventures and tasks; that in the 
development of the dormant humanity there 
are distinct sets of forces active. Now let 
us consider what these forces do. 

They build. If there is any one thing the 
Race-Mind has pondered more deeply than 
anything else it is this weird " building" that 
is constantly going on. The little dwarfs 
build crystal palaces in the depths of the 
mines; the mermen and the mermaids build 
palaces of pearl and coral in the deep of the 
sea ; the Cyclops build terrific factories along 

183 



SYMBOL. PSYCHOLOGY 

the island shores; the Trolls build fantastic 
structures on the rugged Scandinavian coast ; 
the Geni build Aladdin a wonderful palace 
in a night ; and in the Roman Catholic branch 
of the Christian church the Pontifex Maxi- 
mus (which is Latin for "Great Bridge- 
builder") builds the bridge between this 
world and the other, between God and Man ; 
the giants build Valhal for the gods ; every- 
where the Race-Mind sees this " building" 
going on and tells the story of it. It sees 
the sea build the land; it knows that the 
blood builds bone and sinew; it intuitively 
sensates that something must be going on 
in the mind, which is like building — character- 
building we call it nowadays — and that 
intuitive suspicion is woven into a mass of 
building stories. As they tell these stories 
of building, the nations which tell them 
differ, but they weave trite truths into their 
narratives nevertheless. 
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SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

I want to mention only one of the stories 
before I take up "the" story, the real story 
of the building, when the All-Father finally 
tells it in the Wonder Book. Think for a 
moment of the story of the building of Valhal. 
The giants build it. The tremendous forces 
of earth and mind build the dwelling-place 
of the gods. It was impossible to under- 
stand this story until we attained our present- 
day culture and development. But now we 
see; now we comprehend. Look abroad upon 
the vast reaches of man's utilization of the 
gigantic nature forces! See what man has 
done with them ! They do every conceivable 
thing for him. He makes the giant fact 
called "wind" drive his boats and his wind- 
mills ; the giant " gravitation " runs his water- 
wheels and his gravity cars and a thousand 
and one other things ; and the giant " electric- 
ity" lights his houses and his towns, drives 
his dynamos and his trolleys, lifts his eleva- 
i85 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

tors and cooks his food, and talks over miles 
of space, clicks his messages across the sea — 
with wires and without — and does all kinds 
of intelligent but unintelligible things for 
him. These are giants, for they are as big 
as the globe — ay, and bigger ; they reach 
with ease from star to star, and — mirabile 
diciu — the sentence "There were giants in 
those days" is no more true than the equally 
remarkable sentence " There are giants in 
these days." But now think for a moment — 
what are these giants building? It seems at 
first sight as though they were building natu- 
ral things. One inclines at first to the belief 
that they build huge bridges, towering sky- 
scrapers, intricate railroad and telegraph 
systems, ponderous machines, and titanic 
ocean greyhounds. This is quite true, but 
they really build other things, for, along- 
side of these material structures grows an- 
other, no less perfect, no less important, 
186 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

series of structures. We are said to live in 
an age of organizations, and very truly so. 
Organization after organization is being form- 
ed and added to the two parental organiza- 
tions, Church and State. It seems almost as 
though one could say that Church and State 
were parents of a host of children — trust, 
labor union, post-office, telegraph system, a 
financial system, temperance and peace or- 
ganization, organization of teachers, of 
physicians, of scientists, of every kind of 
calling and profession. If the question be 
asked, Whence came they? the answer is, 
primarily, that the Race has attained its 
manhood and that these organizations are 
the tokens of that attainment; but, sec- 
ondarily, they are made possible because 
the giant forces of nature have been made to 
build the palace of — not men, but the gods ; 
though they apparently build the palaces of 
men, they in reality build the palaces of the 

187 



SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

gods, for the machine, the railroad, the 
post-office, the press make it possible for 
men to intercommunicate, to become ac- 
quainted with one another, and that pro- 
duces organization and makes it possible. 
And organization is larger humanity. 

And the reason and purpose back of this ten- 
dency towards the larger organization (and 
the larger manhood or Maximus homo in- 
volved in this) can but be understood by a 
glance at the individual. Look at him. The 
giant forces of nature build the machine, 
and — it displaces man. Here is the most 
serious plaint which the laborer raises against 
the machine. It does the work of a dozen, 
of a hundred, of two hundred, and, of course, 
these are thrown out of work, but — a ma- 
chine can only displace a machine. No 
two bodies of entirely different nature can 
displace each other. A chair cannot dis- 
place a thought and a stone cannot displace 
1 88 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

a filial obligation or a parental duty. So a 
machine can displace only a machine — and 
if man were only a human machine, then, of 
course, he can be displaced by a machine, 
and rightly so, for God did not design him 
ultimately to be a machine. He was a ma- 
chine, collectively, after he had outgrown the 
animal stage. He admitted it; he called his 
political mechanism a machine; the church, 
he felt, was an ecclesiastic mechanism; he 
spoke of the machinery of business — if 
he was collectively a machine, he must 
needs be individually a machine, and can it 
be doubted that he assumed that attitude? 
Look at the man in the trench — the man of 
mechanical employment — and tell me, is that 
fulfilling the design of God ? When God cre- 
ated man, did he design him to be an eating 
and sleeping animal, a digging and trench- 
ing machine? Not at all. As soon as pos- 
sible God would certainly introduce the 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

machine to do the machine work and set 
man free to do the human work. The man 
displaced grumbles at first ; but the machine 
shortens hours, it limits labor, it reduces 
wear and tear, and it gives men time to 
cultivate their mental side. They may not 
do it as yet, but ultimately, when the me- 
chanical side of things can be attended to 
by a handful of men, man will be free to 
grow into that manhood which can come 
only when the giants have built the pal- 
ace of the gods, for manhood in its aggre- 
gate is "the gods." And the giants build 
the palace of the gods because they set 
men free from mechanical lines by putting 
machines in the places designed by God for 
machines, and not for men, from the begin- 
ning. 

This is the story of the Scandinavian build- 
ing, and this the age in which it is being 
accomplished, whence springs the deep and 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

otherwise almost inexplicable interest in 
Wagner's "Niebelungen Ring." 

But now to the "real" work. All other 
stories are simply sketches or echoes of the 
grand evolvement of the story in the " Won- 
der Book." Follow it there. The mystic 
tale draws the first bold lines when it tells 
the story of the Ark of Noah. No one would 
suspect into what phases of life the symbol- 
picture presently develops — the great ark, 
floating on the tempestuous waters, with its 
freight of clean and unclean animals and its 
varied humanity, all in mystic numbers of 
twos and sevens, and the vague numeral in- 
volved in the names Noah and his wife and 
his three sons and their wives. The great 
ship, with its man-animal freight, is launched 
upon the great waters. Then the story goes 
calmly on, until after a little it introduces 
the same picture once more. Again it is 
an ark, "pitched within and without with 
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pitch" as was the other, but now it floats 
on the narrower body of water, on the river, 
and the animal has disappeared, leaving 
only the human, the Babe Moses. And 
again the ark appears. The third step is 
the step from water to land, and the little 
ark contains, not the living symbol of the 
Lav/, Moses, but the stone tablets of the Law, 
the stones hewn by Moses, but the writing 
writ by the "finger of God." And here the 
building process begins. Here is the first 
foreshadowing of that Temple that is to 
be. Follow its evolution, a Divine evolution, 
written by Him of whom students of nature 
have traced the footsteps in the layerings 
of rocks and in the indentations of the sea 
and in the markings of shell and the articula- 
tions of a vertebra. About the little Ark 
of the Covenant are woven the hangings, 
the skins, the curtains. The Tabernacle is 
upreared, built according to the pattern 
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SYMBOL- PSYCHOLOGY 

shown to Moses in the Mount, from the ma- 
terial contributed willingly by the people, 
its planks and its sockets and its rings — its 
every part willingly given of the people. 
And this Tabernacle, containing the mar- 
vellously perfect type of the "Life-token," 
the Ark of the Covenant, moves according 
to the Divine will, hither and yon, as the 
pillar of cloud and of fire lifts and moves. 
And then the structure crystallizes. It loses 
the feature of mobility and of journeying, 
and becomes fixed. The temple is built. All 
that was originally there is still there — the 
tablets of stone in the ark and the ark in 
the Tabernacle, now called the Oracle, and 
that as the rearward third of the Temple, 
with its fantastic triple gallery widening up- 
ward, five and six and seven cubits, sup- 
ported by a forest of pillars. 

And then the picture of the temple on 
earth grows dim, and Ezekiel sees the form 
*3 i93 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

and counts the measurements of the Temple's 
spiritual counterpart, coinciding mystically 
with the physical building, but showing a 
peculiar inversion of process — for Moses saw 
the pattern of the Tabernacle, " spiritually 
discerned," in the mount before he built it 
on earth, while Ezekiel sees the pattern of 
the Temple, again " spiritually discerned," 
after it has been built. And then " the archi- 
tecture of souls" is admitted. Jesus, the 
actual Temple of God, tells the marvelling 
Jews to tear down the Temple and He will 
rebuild it in three days, and "speaks of the 
Temple of His Body." And yet more plainly 
is that architecture admitted when the final 
story is told and the rapt eye of John be- 
holds the Holy City, and his stammering lips 
tell us, "I saw no Temple therein, for the 
Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the 
Temple of it." 

We speak so much of " character building," 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

and yet it seems as though readers of the 
Bible had failed to realize the fact that it is 
the actual story of how God builds the 
character of man, how He launches him 
forth upon the sea of life with all kinds of 
animal and human possibilities, how He 
presently prepares the means for weeding 
out the animal traits and leaving the human 
to stand at the centre of things. And when 
this has been done man starts upon his wil- 
derness journey. So many and so varied and 
so strange and so bitter are these experi- 
ences that our theologians have been over- 
whelmed by the mass of embittered variety, 
and have devised a system of Divine ethics 
which militates strangely against the quiet, 
majestic facts as stated in the Word of God. 
The law is crystallized at the centre of Israel ; 
it is built around with tender solicitude, and 
every gift is willingly offered. Of no other 
gift will the Great Architect avail Himself. 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

There is a pattern on the mountain for you 
and me, my friend. There is an ideal you 
and an ideal I, and God is unflinchingly and 
undeviatingly building it into our souls and 
nether minds. And only what we give Him 
willingly does He build into the Ego that is 
to be "We" some day. How many things 
we do because we are compelled to, how 
many things mechanically and automatically, 
how many ignorantly! None of them — I 
beg of you not to let the shadow of doubt, 
no matter how apparently legitimate, darken 
this fact for a moment, and not because of 
any after effect such doubt may have on you, 
but because it would be unjust and unkind, 
and untrue to Him — none of these enter in. 
Only what we do, you and I, of our own 
absolute free will and free choice, unurged 
by circumstances or environment or inher- 
itance, or any of the inhabitants of Canaan 
before we enter into its possession, only this 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

enters into the structure of character. And 
then the wavering, moving, uncertain Taber- 
nacle of youth settles down into the fixed 
Temple of natural manhood. All we really 
were in youth is there. The Latin and the 
Greek which belonged to college may have 
been erased from the tablets of memory, and 
the brawn you gathered into your muscles 
from the stroke of the college oar may have 
oozed out in the worry and fret of catching 
trains, and many of the faces of boyish 
friends and foes may have whitened into the 
sudden calm of death or drifted far away 
into inaccessible parts of the Giant Humanity, 
but all you were and had of real manhood in 
those boyish, Tabernacle days is there, and 
the Temple of your natural manhood is built 
around it. 

I admit that the courts of that Temple may 
have been trampled by the soiled feet of 
alien thoughts and feelings, of things ignoble 
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and unclean, but within it all there is a 
spiritual temple. You and I will not become 
spirits some of these days — we are spirits now. 
Clay -housed, we walk a natural world, en- 
cased in which, like your own spirit in your 
own body, lies the only spiritual world you 
will ever see. But that is theology. I am 
not writing theology just now — I am writing 
Religion. That sense of fair-play, that love 
of frankness and sincerity, the desire for true 
friendship, the loyalty you felt towards your 
school, your church, your family, your coun- 
try, and the sense of right and wrong — all 
these real, human things were being built 
up, away inside, while you were building 
up a doctor or a lawyer or a preacher or a 
mechanic or a farmer around them, And 
this inner "you" is the Temple Ezekiel saw. 
And when it has all been told, have you or 
I a purpose in life that is not God's? And 
if we have, will it live? Can we really fly 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

in the face of Providence? Can men blow 
out the sun or lift the earth " from its hinges ' ' 
or bring it about that fish will swim in air? 
The mental universe is as large as the physical 
one, and He who can spin an earth along its 
course without asking our help can also spin 
a soul along its course about Himself without 
seriously consulting us. But are we not in 
freedom and can we not do as we will? Of 
course we are in freedom and can do as we 
will, but all we do outside of God is not last- 
ing; it has no life, it has no value. You and 
I may have a variety of mad, mental desires. 
We may wish to rule over others, or to in- 
dulge in what theologians call the love of 
self and the world, or to believe untrue things, 
but we will find, sooner or later, that these 
things have no actual results, and God 
waits patiently until we do. And meanwhile, 
tenderly, sweetly, He builds the gentle 
thought of the morning, the unspoken wish 

J 99 



SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

of real love for wife or child, and other deli- 
cate possibilities, into that spiritual Temple 
and into His Own Giant Self — the Race. 
For after all, and after all, we were children 
of the Race when we were born and we are 
children of God when we die. Somehow, 
whether we are able to see and understand 
just how it all comes about, we are not out- 
side of God, but in Him, and what He has 
done for us that have we done for Him ; how, 
otherwise, could the Word of God say, " Bless 
God" and mean anything? So, at the end, 
your character is His and it is He who is the 
Temple and not you or I, though we may 
be pillars of it. And therein lies the sweet- 
ness of this thought of the architecture of 
souls that we are " building Him" when we 
build and the bitterness of the thought that 
we are hindering Him when we do not build, 
else why should the Father place on the lips 
of His servant, David, the word, "Against 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

Thee, against Thee only have I sinned," and 
upon the lips of His Humanity the sweet and 
blessed antithesis, "As Thou, Father, art in 
me and I in Thee, that they also may be 
one in us"? Ay, even so let it be. "For 
the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are 
the Temple of it." The Temple is the Man- 
hood of the Race. 



IX 

CONCLUSION 

THERE is an Evolution of Divine Things 
as there is an Evolution of Natural Things. 
The evolution of natural things culminates 
in the production of a human body in 
which there shall be a soul, called the In- 
ternal Man. The evolution of divine things 
requires the production of a traditionally 
and symbolically written Word in which 
there shall be a soul, called the Inner Word 
or the Internal Sense. Along the pathway 
of the evolution of the human body there 
are complete existences, fossils, crystals, 
plants, animals, each the effort to create or 
to produce parts and sections of the totality 
presently to be achieved in man. So along 
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SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY 

the pathway of the Evolution of the Word 
there are stories, complete existences, sacred 
books, and mythologies of the nations of old, 
each an effort of the Race-Mind to respond 
in part to the demands of the Divine 
Revelator, until finally these are gathered 
into one Vast Dramatic Epic, the Word of 
God, giving the story of the Evolution of a 
Soul and its final achievement of the charac- 
ter dormant within it. And we have pushed 
the curtain just a little to one side and have 
caught a glimpse of how the Race - Mind 
saw great philosophic truths and clothed 
them in the garmenture of symbol stories — 
the duality of man, his animal side and his 
human side ; the dormant possibilities within 
man, his inward or heavenward journey 
(for the Kingdom of Heaven is within you) ; 
the struggles and efforts along the road; 
the forces moving upward and downward 
on the various planes of life ; and, finally, the 
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upbuilding of character into the "similitude 
and likeness of God." 

And now we drop the curtain and cast 
our eyes over the wide sweep of God's 
world and breathe a sigh — as of a task ac- 
complished. 

I gazed upon mine hands and saw the words 

Grow line on line; 
I noted thoughts and things, and loves and hopes, 

And thought them mine. 
But now I bring them to Thine altar, Lord. 

They are not mine. 
Weave them into the Manhood of the Race, 

For they are Thine. 



THE END 



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